I just finished reading that article and was going to start a thread on it myself... I thought it was a good article. As with so many other industries, the small scale, hands-on operation is getting shoved out by the behemoths. Some day when I have horses of my own I'll send them to a hands-on trainer--if there are any left.

I thought the best part of the article was this bit: "The successful trainer today is self-promoting," he said. "That in itself isn't necessarily bad, but you don't have the hands-on trainers you used to have. They're relying on assistants to tell them if a horse has a sore shin or a horse didn't eat up last night."