By Christopher Haire

Who needs news?

No, I am serious. Who needs it?

Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein and Neil Sheehan are museum exhibits of an outdated past. The days of government watchdogs disseminating news to the public are over – we have blogs, press agents and Wikipedia for that.

Last night at McKenna Theater, somewhere between descriptions of the radical San Francisco Panorama and listening to Dave Eggers, Phil Bronstein and Oscar Villalon give what was in effect a state of the news media, I realized that the sinking of newspapers is not only inevitable but also, er, well, old news.

Newspapers have been sinking like the Titanic for so long that the only thing left for journalists to do is play their violin swan song and hope James Cameron turns the tragedy into a billion-dollar blockbuster.

Despite the energy of Eggers, the pragmatism of Bronstein and the I-am-trying-to-look-distinguished leer of Villalon, most of the concerns surrounding newspapers remained unanswered.

However, the trio’s lack of answers was not surprising. These days, it seems as if no one in the media has any answers about their fledgling profession.

At the onset of the lecture, Eggers showed a picture of Panorama’s newsroom. It was chaotic. It was messy. It was a Walmart during Christmas.

“It’s obviously a slovenly place, we’re not real organized,” Eggers said. “We’re just a small group of people who put this together.”

Unfortunately, the messy newsroom, although a journalistic cliché, is analogous to the state of newspapers: A group of journalists, unorganized, operating on the no-plan plan, trying to put something together.

They are trying hard but their ideas are akin to trying to extinguish an inferno with a spray bottle.

Panorama, for example, may be the “Blonde on Blonde” of newspapers but it is not a feasible long-term option. And Eggers, like Bob Dylan, cannot be – nor should he be – the savior of his cause, only one of its innovators.

However, there are too few innovators and even fewer good ideas.

During the production of Panorama, Eggers said, he had to remind himself that he had no rules to obey.

Maybe that is the problem. The technological revolution has broken down the rules by which newspapers play. So why, then, do journalists continue to play by the book?

Perhaps, after years of knowing what news is and what it should look like, journalists are clinging to the good old days like Linus to his security blanket.

For all the talk about developing unique business models, departing from traditional production ideas and pioneering the 21st century newspaper revolution, Panorama is the exception, not the standard.

No matter how hard they try, newspapers will never compete with the freedom of blogs, the accessibility of Craigslist, and the amusement of Facebook.

So all that is left are three men on wobbly stools trying to grasp the concept of their very own Little Big Horn.

Eggers, Bronstein and Villalon should be admired and praised. They are trying to save an industry that has served for generations as the fourth estate of democracy, but without an entire generation of innovators, it will be all for naught.

So back to the question, who needs news? Well, individuals, society, democracy – pretty much the foundations of our country.

However, who is willing to fight for the survival of newspapers? Obviously anyone with a reporter’s notebook and a press pass will hang around. But what about the readers? Are they willing to get newsprint on their hands or will they settle for the sanitary confines of their office chairs?

More importantly, who in the journalism community is willing to cut the umbilical cord of the past and dive head first into the radical era of new journalism?

Can newspapers stay afloat? Maybe. How? I, like Eggers, Bronstein and Villalon, have no clue.

What I do know is that if the entire profession does not change the way it conceptualizes news and business, newspapers will succumb to the freezing ocean of technology.

If newspapers do die, journalists will only have one hope: that Kate Winslet slides over and gives them a piece of that wooden door, which – sorry to ruin the ending – won’t happen.