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OAKVILLE BEAVER Thursday, October 29, 2009 · 6 The Oakville Beaver 467 Speers Rd., Oakville Ont. L6K 3S4 (905) 845-3824 Fax: 337-5571 Classified Advertising: 905-632-4440 Circulation: 845-9742 The Oakville Beaver is a member of the Ontario Press Council. The council is located at 80 Gould St., Suite 206, Toronto, Ont., M5B 2M7. Phone (416) 340-1981. Advertising is accepted on the condition that, in the event of a typographical error, that portion of advertising space occupied by the erroneous item, together with a reasonable allowance for signature, will not be charged for, but the balance of the advertisement will be paid for at the applicable rate.The publisher reserves the right to categorize advertisements or decline. Editorial and advertising content of the Oakville Beaver is protected by copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited. Commentary Letter to the Editor NEIL OLIVER Vice-President and Group Publisher, Metroland West DAVID HARVEY Regional General Manager JILL DAVIS Editor in Chief ROD JERRED Managing Editor DANIEL BAIRD Advertising Director RIZIERO VERTOLLI Photography Director SANDY PARE Business Manager MARK DILLS Director of Production MANUEL GARCIA Production Manager CHARLENE HALL Director of Distribution SARAH MCSWEENEY Circ. Manager WEBSITE oakvillebeaver.com Speaking from experience We are expressing our concerns for what we understand is the Halton Catholic District School Board (HCDSB) intention to install flood lights around the sports field located adjacent to St. Ignatius of Loyola Secondary School. We believe it is important to offer some background pertaining to our residency in the neighbourhood adjacent to the school's sports field. We moved to Stoneybrook Trail in June 1998 from Halifax, N.S. where we lived within proximity of a heavily lit, outdoor community sports complex. In the spirit of being a compromising good neighbour, we quickly learned that living close to a facility of this kind certainly had its pros and cons. While we excused large crowds parading down our small street along with substantial amounts of noise, the truly most frustrating aspect of our negative experiences derived from the field being washed by wide-scale lighting structures well into late evening hours. We became well acquainted with the annoyance and loss of privacy from light trespass and glare, as well as general neighborhood-related problems from nighttime parking overflow and unruly partiers who chose to consume alcohol or its alternatives in the surrounding area while nighttime sporting events were underway and/or long after the conclusion of those events. During our house hunting mission in Oakville in the winter of 1998, we discovered a number of attractive homes in an array of neighborhoods, which all warranted careful consideration. However, when we compared property features based on our priorities and recent experiences, the Stoneybrook home clearly distinguished itself from all others given the property's sense of privacy amongst an environmentally agreeable setting. Central in our conclusion was our observation that the sports field lying behind our property did not have substantial lighting facilities similar to that which we were so eager to leave behind. It's considerably ironic that 11 years later, we're faced with the same problem as the HCDSB plans to install (70-80-feet) field lights. Frankly, we don't require the conclusions of third-party consultants' reports. We lived through the repercussions and know exactly what we are facing. Please be 100 per cent clear about understanding our concern: we have no argument with improving the facilities with field turf and installing a new composite running track. In fact, we're pleased that local athletes will soon have the opportunity to practice and play their sports on modern facilities. Our response will be to conduct ourselves, as always, as a compromising, good neighbour. However, the plans for lights are a completely different issue and we ask the HCDSB to reciprocate as a compromising, good neighbour and stop its plan to light St. Ignatius of Loyola Secondary School's athletic field. RANDALL AND LYANNE O'LEARY RECOGNIZED FOR EXCELLENCE BY: Ontario Community Newspapers Association Canadian Community Newspapers Association Suburban Newspapers of America THE OAKVILLE BEAVER IS PROUD OFFICIAL MEDIA SPONSOR FOR: United Way of Oakville TV AUCTION KAREN NEWMAN / OAKVILLE BEAVER FORE AFRICA: Earlier this fall, oomama held a tournament at the Royal Ontario Golf Club that drew 160 golfers and raised more than $26,000 for the Stephen Lewis Foundation (SLF) -- oomama is the local grandmothers group assisting grandmothers in Africa fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Pictured here, as the 2009 oomama golf committee handed over the cheque to SLF, are, in back from left, Donna Doherty Lozon, Helen Gareau, Mary Coleman, Marjorie McDowell, Kathy Mason, Cheryl Savage, Hanne Lang, Kathy Margolese. In front, from left, Mary Lynn Carter, Nancy Schock, Gloria Ingram and Charleen Halstead. The elephant in the room is stepping on his newspaper T oday we address the elephant in the room. If you're reading this and you are not online -- and you have not broken into my office to access the documents on my computer -- then I assume you're reading a newspaper, print edition. Which, according to seers and techie types, means you are (a) ridiculously old (b) supporting a medium that, in the words of Martin Short's neurotic nerd Ed Grimley, is "as doomed as doomed can be." Granted, people have been predicting the ultimate demise of newspapers since about 1605, and the death of print for 20 years. And while it would take heads buried hopelessly in the sand to think that the industry is not ailing -- staff cuts and closures abound beyond what experts expected from the slumping economy -- I believe the rumors of the death of newspapers have been gravely exaggerated. In a Newsweek article headed, Bail Out Newspapers? -- Let Them Die And Get Out Of The Way, writer Daniel Lyons outlines assorted arguments as to why U.S. Congress should not bail out the industry. If you can overcome the irony of a guy writing for a weekly news magazine calling newspapers obsolete -- like week-old news in moribund magazines have a future in today's instant information age -- then Lyons makes some valid points, starting with his opening salvo, "Nobody in their right mind believes the future of the news business involves paper and ink rather than pixels on a screen." Not that I've ever been accused of being in my right mind, but, still, I get Andy Juniper that, I really do. While I love my print newspaper -- an organized package of all the news I need, not presented on a glowing computer screen that I've already been blindingly staring at for eight hours a day -- I do acknowledge the inevitable, that one day the printed word will go the way of the dodo. Still, despite what Lyons and his ilk attest, we will continue to need newspapers. That is, organized groups of professional journalists gathering news, professionally. Like Lyons, my kids are forever saying that newspapers are obsolete. So, I ask the resident geniuses, where do they (or where would I) get my news if newspapers were to die? Online, they say. Ah, that vague, nebulous umbrella, online. From what sites? And they send me to sites like MSN where all the news I seek is nowhere to be found. Today's headlines, and I'm not making this up: Top 10 Biscuit Recipes. Can She Stop Her Chin Hairs From Growing? Fun and Creative Crafts With Gourds. Oh, and there is a New York Times' link to a story on H1N1, but last time I checked, the Times was a newspaper. Meantime, my older son, a newshound, sends me surfing to assorted informative sites, many of which are also newspapers. Yes, we need newspapers. And, yes, the future is online. So what is the problem? Let's (eventually) leap from print to pixels. Well, that's like the leap music lovers took when they quit buying tunes and started downloading everything for free, a leap that left the music business busted and a lot of young bands out in the cold. As Lyons says, "Nobody has yet figured out how to make loads of money delivering news over the Internet." Newspapers are ailing. They also must be evolving because if they cease to exist, our news will be dumbed-down beyond belief, reduced to riveting recipes on biscuits. Andy Juniper can be visited at his website, www.strangledeggs.com, or contacted at ajjuniper@gmail.com.