Xara is on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/XaraGroup?fref=ts and sends out the Outsider once a month.

But yes, I agree the entire way we learn about and purchase products today is very very different than 15-20 years ago.

Mom and Pop shops have been replaced by "Big Box Stores", Costco, Wal-Mart, Office Max/Depot, etc. Book stores still exist but they were hurt tremendously by large book sellers like Borders and Barns & Noble who in turn have been hurt tremendously by Amazon and other on-line book sellers.

The advertising business when I was in it in the 70-90s was primarily a business of specialists. As an art director I ordered type to be set by skilled typesetters who learned their trade via working as apprentices and working their way into skilled positions. The 8 x 10 film shot by professional photographers was sent to labs where expert printmakers created Dye Transfer and other high quality prints for retouching. Photos were sent to expert photo retouchers who were skilled artists and could perform miracles. Pasteup artists working in the agency would take the typography and paste it up. These artists wielding #11 X-Acto knives could cut apart words and sentences so perfectly you could hardly see the cut lines. I had one pasteup artist once cut an entire block of text apart and word for word reassemble the text to a thinner margin.

The pasteup was stent with the retouched photos to a photo engraver who created the printing plates for various magazines based on the printing specs for each publication, rotogravure, web, letterpress, etc.

We viewed printed samples of the ads before approval and the engravers were capable of altering the color and other aspects of the ad.

Today the art director sends a PDF/X file to the publication and hopes for the best.