"R-J Living section better than a poke in eye"

Dear Editors,

I can't quite believe I'm writing to defend the Review-Journal's Living section because they do seem to try especially hard to bore their readers to death and ignore the fact that we live in the most fascinating, most entertaining, most star-studded and pop-culture-zeitgeist-forming city on the whole planet. (Note to R-J editors: Snap up Kirk Baird from the Sun before it's too late; that guy actually makes reading a features section fun in this town. He actually seems to -- gasp! -- like Las Vegas!)

And yet, your rip on John Pryzbys' piece on podcasting last week was, while typically amusing, misdirected. The fact is that podcasting didn't turn mainstream until early July when Apple upgraded iTunes to make it obscenely simple to subscribe to them and download them onto MP3 players. Before that, it was the province, largely, of computer geeks. And his explanations, while simplistic, were probably necessary to not just the oldsters who stopped reading the piece when they realized this had to do with something electronic.

In a way, this was actually a pretty forward-thinking piece for a newspaper that only earlier this summer ran a series of columns explaining what a blog is.

STEVE FRIESS

The writer is a Las Vegas-based freelance journalist who will launch a weekly Internet show and podcast Aug. 18 at www.lvrocks.com.