Las Vegas Conversations: Exploring the Relationship between

Communication and Community

Introduction

This book is about Las Vegas as told by the people who live here and who have made it what it is today.  The people in this book are message makers. These people work, or have worked in message-making and information disseminating industries such as television, radio, newspaper, advertising, public relations, education, and politics.  These are the people who have their fingers on the pulse of the community. They are the moves and shakers. Many of them have a deep understanding of the community and why it is the way it is. 

This book is for the people of Las Vegas. It=s for them and their families, friends, lovers, and significant others of all types. It=s for my neighbors and all the neighborhoods of Las Vegas and the surrounding valley. It=s also for all those wanderers who pass through this valley and all the strangers who were here a short time and then gone. Without the diversity of individuals inhabiting this place this book would not have been possible. This book is about the ever-evolving community of Las Vegas.  A place is defined by its people and I have found the people of Las Vegas and its surrounds friendly, fascinating, and worthy of study.  Las Vegas is a wondrous and weird place because of them.

The idea for this book comes from the philosophical questions we all, at one time or another, ask ourselves: Why are we here, and how did we get here?  Why are things the way they are? How did the place where I live get to be like this?  We ask ourselves these questions because the answers help give us meaning to our lives.  I was interested in these questions and the meaning of my life. Like some of you reading this book, I live in Las Vegas.  Like most people living in Las Vegas, I wasn=t born here.  In fact, only about three percent of the people who live here are native Nevadans. I made a decision to be here ten years ago based on my career and economic situation. That, in part explains why I live here. That is also a common answer to the question: Why do you live in Las Vegas? The answer—job opportunities. But this book is not about jobs or the economy, although they play an important role in the life of any community.  This book is about communication in its many, varied forms.  The underlying assumption is that communication is an essential community-building variable, that without satisfactory forms of communication, community would not be possible, and would not survive.

I’m fascinated with all sorts of things and I love to explore, examine, and delve into things—not too intensely, but just enough to satisfy my curiosity. I get obsessed with different things, get into them, collect them, and then eventually get bored with many of them.  Las Vegas has been an exception and this book is the result of one such obsession. I find Las Vegas an endlessly interesting place to explore. I hope that you find this explorer’s notes contained herein to be of some value, if not fascinating.