The headline above did not spring from my brain. It’s a line I cribbed from David Carr’s New York Times column that ran Tuesday of this week. In it, Carr laments the decline in old media.

As he notes in somewhat understated fashion, it’s been a tough few days for newspapers and magazines, an industry in which I labored — mostly contentedly — for close to two decades.

Here’s the rundown that has Carr doing his best Chicken Little impression.

The inimitable Christian Science Monitor, which has published for a century, announced it will become a Web-only paper starting in 2009.

Time Inc., publisher of such identifiable brands as TIME and Sports Illustrated, has announced it will eliminate 600 jobs.

The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., the 15th largest paper in the nation, will reduce its editorial department by 40 percent.

Gannett, which publishes USA Today and dozens of newspapers across the country, announced that it is cutting 10 percent of its staff — or, as Carr notes, up to 3,000 jobs.

And the Tribune Company let it be known that it will cut 75 jobs from the Los Angeles Times, once the possessor of one of the most muscular newsrooms in the country.

Clearly the sky is falling — for old media.

For someone like myself who worked at newspapers for most of my professional life, it’s painful to watch, this drawn-out death by a thousand cuts, whether they be layoffs, buyouts or positions going unfilled. First and foremost, some of those jobs being eliminated may well be filled by people I know. And secondly, the timing of these announcements possesses a hint of the ironic. There’s an historic presidential election, an economic collapse, two U.S. wars, corruption aplenty by public officials and a dramatic story around every corner it seems these days. There’s more than enough news to go around for everyone.

And yet … and yet … we wake up every other week to news like this.

As someone who now makes his professional home in the new media, my hope is that we can help fill in the gaps left by a newspaper/magazine industry in retreat. I say that as someone who sees tremendous opportunities in new media. But I say it also as someone who respects the service the media has performed — and still performs. And that is to inform a sometimes grateful, often distracted public. The American people need a vigorous press, if only to uncover what’s going on. We in the new media need to step up to the challenge. Otherwise, we all suffer.