You know how the compound eyes of a fly are designed to spot motion and not stationary objects? Well, to a lesser degree ours are as well (which is why we don't see our nose). We're evolutionarily trained to focus on change, even at the cost of sometimes missing what's right in front of us.The chart below (from Gawker) brings this to mind. It shows US newspaper advertising revenue from 1982 to last year, with the dark brown print revenues and the light brown online. It was headlined "Over the precipice", and the same news (of a 9.4% fall in print ad revenue and a 7.9% fall overall, including online) elsewhere got similarly apocalyptic coverage about the largest fall in fifty years.
But when you see this chart, what's the first thing that you notice? Surprisingly, the industry is just ten percent off its historic highs (much like the stock market) and is still twice as big as it was twenty years ago.