Publisher

The media landscape in Reno just got a little less interesting. Monthly magazine Reno Tahoe Tonight’s October issue is its last. RTT publisher, editor, writer, salesman, and kitchen sink repairman Oliver X is still the chairman of the board of Artown For more information, visit www.streetseenllc.com.

So, Reno Tahoe Tonight’s final issue?

Final issue was in October. That was it. We’re going to still do a little bit of online stuff—a little bit. … I have a Paula Abdul article that I did, an interview with her the other day, and she was the sweetest person in the world, oh, my god. So I need to post that in advance of her November 4 event at the Silver Legacy, and then just a couple of little pieces, and then I’m just going to shift over to StreetSeen as my journalistic platform.

What’s StreetSeen?

StreetSeen is my new company. Basically, it’s a glorified poster and distribution company. It sort of evolved out of the business-to-business distribution that I did for years myself with the magazine. Building retail relationships with small businesses to take the magazine developed the opportunity for me to do collateral distribution of printed materials at the point of sale and in windows and stuff. And that multiplied and just blossomed from just a side thing to the dominant thing that took over the magazine, basically. I can do with StreetSeen what I could not do with the magazine, because I do not have to print the material. I’m just taking collateral given to me—sometimes we’ll make posters if people don’t know how. I never got any of the big casino accounts in print because we were just too racy. … I remember the Peppermill told me, “People just don’t get it. They don’t get the magazine. They want to know, “Oh, is this what we do tonight here in Reno?” No, it’s really a hyper locals thing that’s uncensored and goes beyond just entertainment, and it never fit into a really neat box. … Ultimately, why I stopped it was because I’m not a hobbyist. I like to immerse myself in a thing … With 14 things, literally, that I did in the magazine—including billing, distribution, editing, writing, all the freelance procurement of talent, and the development of that talent as far as interns go.

It seems nice and cush to me, coming from the weekly business.

Ha! I feel the same way when people tell me they put out a quarterly. … You’re never off, and what happens being never off—I saw elements of my personality changing. I saw my stress level change. I saw my health degrade a little bit. And I wanted to catch it now because I saw my father work himself to death. He worked at McDonnell Douglas. He was a trade unionist there as a spot welder—a career guy, 27 years. And it just chewed him, and he died young. I just wanted to work smarter and have vacations, things like that. And the print industry is just such a grind. I do love it, and what I’ll probably do with our legacy … is put out an anthology of the year in pictures every year.

The photography and the design always looked so great.

Thanks, man. That’s a huge compliment to my team and to the talent here. Because in a tiny community we have world class photography. People from other places come here and see the photography and say, “Wow!” for the ADDYs and the Nevada Press Association awards, et cetera.

Did you make it 10 years?

Almost. Feb. 6 would have been our tenth year. … So we did about 105 issues, officially. It was a good run, and the support of the community was huge.