BOSTON, 2014—In October 2008, The Christian Science Monitor announced it was shifting to a “Web-first, multiplatform strategy.” The bulk of our international reporting resources, we said, would be devoted to our Web site, CSMonitor.com, on a 24/7 basis, and print would go from daily to weekly. Smaller newspapers had made similar changes, but the Monitor, while not a giant among circulation leaders, was the biggest name to do so at the time.

Not that plenty of people weren’t ringing alarm bells about print back then. David Morgan, a longtime media executive and a board member of the Belo Corporation, warned that a hard rain was about to fall: “Newspapers,” he declared at a new media conference in October ’08, “prepare for disassembly.”

Indeed, the years following the financial panic of 2008–2009 were devastating. Every media company was shaken and some are still spiraling downward—yearly revenue eroding, layoffs resulting, erosion resuming. Five years later a lot of the great names in newspapering are gone, their brands retired or flying atop Web-only operations, their brick and mortar sold by Chapter 11 receivers. Just as old-timers wistfully recall the New York Herald Tribune, The Washington Star, and the Dallas Times Herald, two dozen more mastheads have fallen since 2009, and another dozen or so just don’t know it’s coming yet.

Complete access to this article will soon be available for purchase. Subscribers will be able to access this article, and the rest of CJR’s magazine archive, for free. Select articles from the last 6 months will remain free for all visitors to CJR.org.