The SF Chronicle staff has set up a wiki to discuss what to do after the newspaper folds.(h/t Will Sullivan) Although an interesting glimpse at the business minds of journalists at work, I think they need others outside journalism and the print business to suggest ideas.

However, I found these insights to be most interesting:

Technology

No daily paper is going to beat Valleywag, Wired.com, Venture Beat, Mashable, and Techcrunch to scoops in the bay area. It’s just not going to happen. They are too deeply integrated into tech culture.

BUT, a local paper can add value to all the niche scoops that these publications are producing. Curating all the bullshit that comes out of those websites could increase the signal-to-noise ratio by 10 times. Take the HuffPo model and quote freely while linking out to the sites that did the reporting. That’d do it. That’s an enormous amount of value in and of itself. Second, take a look at Sarah Lacy’s recent articles for TechCrunch. She’s got an eye for trends and deep enough contacts in the valley to get the stories written. That’s what you need for a daily paper. In fact, she’d be a perfect editor of a Silicon Valley section of the S.F. Post-Chron.

(I like the idea that journalists see writing as a craft that others can also do well)

On News Aggregation:

One task of the reinvigorated, beefed-up copy desk (noted above) would be to take all the bits of content coming in, from neighborhood bloggers, political reporters, & the community itself, and fit those into wiki entries. So now, editors are a) vetting and improving information, and b) constantly integrating it into the larger context of the wiki.

One early implementation of this idea can be peeped at archExplore. DavisWiki is also a great example. Feel free to add more examples.

Here’s an idea. Our company has been coaching real estate bloggers to post breaking housing market news in their region in the quasi-role of a real estate reporter. Homescopes is an example of a site where Realtors around the Bay Area broadcast/Twitter the latest housing market news in their areas. This kind of unique commentary could also be incorporated into SFGate’s real estate section to supplement the standard new listings ads.

Here’s the request to open up the SF Chronicle post-demise wiki so we can add more examples.

With the sudden closure of Denver’s Rocky Mountain News Friday and the publication of its epitaph video, the past week has been filled with speculation on the future of newspapers. David Cohn, of Spot.us, a collaborative funding source for journalist assignments, is chronicling topical articles on his Google Reader shared items. Recommended.

In sum, the future existence of newpapers must always return to the revenue model. The most radical being proposed is paradoxically a return to the old model of paid content. Walter Isaacson proposed the return of walled subscription services on February 5 in Time Magazine, and newspaper publishing company Hearst and Cablevision, owner of Newsday both just announced walled content initiatives.

The fifth estate’s laments focus on the value of their trade as monetizable, i.e. news is worth paying for. The problem with their argument is “free” news will always exist – through newspapers and journalists that won’t wall their content, through CNN, and via the bloggers and Twitterers who will distribute the free content. What else could a Newsday or SF Chronicle, or your local paper, add to the news that someone will pay for? Think about that.

The return of walled subscription services will put journalist value in a “put up or shut up” position that could threaten their entire value proposition. Duncan Riley dares newspapers to wall in content:

Why? because it will drive their readers to other sites, including blogs, and that’s good for business if you’re in the web publishing business.

It might also once and for all prove that the blogosphere doesn’t need newspapers as a primary source of news

Turning back the clock to the old world business model in which “we, the media, own the content” makes little sense. There’s a hint of disintermediation frustration behind the media’s stance. We know many citizen journalists already write about ideas and topics they know much better (through their life experience) than the beat reporter, and it remains to be seen what really will be called “news” in the future.

From the SF Chronicle itself: The SF Chronicle is ready to shut down if unions don’t accept pay cuts. The Bay Area public knows the Chronicle has been a second rate rag for a while now. Read the comments to this article to understand why nobody wants to read the Chronicle – lackluster, trivial content. Cutting staff that provides the content will just accelerate the death spiral. And they just bought new printing presses for June delivery? Cancel that order… prediction: Chronicle folds by year end.

Any hope? Sad for the newspaper guilds, but if content can be improved by recruiting citizen journalists / bloggers around the Bay Area (and many are good writers), it may cut expenses enough to provide some sort of business model.

The NY Post just fired their famous gossip columnist Liz Smith, who was making $125,000 annually for three columns per week. What does that mean? Simplistically, Liz’s $800 per column didn’t contribute the extra $800 ad revenue to keep her on… Any entertainment blogger would jump at the chance to replace her.

UPDATE: 2/26/09: Denver’s Rocky Mountain News shuts down tomorrow. They are even selling the website!