Newspapers are going down the tubes fast, but some enterprising journalists in San Francisco are turning to a new technology to try to come with with ideas to help save the industry. Following the news this week that Hearst may shut down the San Francisco Chronicle, Sarah Rich and Alexis Madrigal set up a wiki on Seattle's Wetpaint called The San Francisco Post-Chronicle that makes pleas for suggestions to save the city's largest daily newspaper.

The writers from Dwell and Wired.com are asking designers to submit mock ups on what a new-and-improved Chronicle Web site could look like as well as possible distribution methods for the content. And then, of course, there's the tricky question of the business model.

"The beautiful thing about building the first new news org here in the Bay would be that you could draw both on the tremendous traditional newspaper talent and all the bloggers and reporters who've worked in the online world," write Rich and Madrigal. "You could also pick the latest in open source tools, so you don't get locked into a crappy content management system that you also overpaid for."

Obviously, there's a lot of energy right now being spent on the idea of saving newspapers in some form. As I noted earlier, there's a panel discussion almost every other night on the topic in Seattle as the community prepares for the closure of the P-I.

After the UW panel this week, I was chatting with Newsgarden founder and former Tacoma News Tribune new media guru Mark Briggs about what needs to be done to help preserve online journalism.

We agreed that the key doesn't reside so much in the brains of newspaper editors and reporters, though they certainly need to be a part of the process. It really comes down to developers and business people.

Like San Francisco, Seattle is crawling with talent in those areas. Will a group emerge to tackle the opportunity?

One idea is to get the tech community engaged, setting up a Seattle Startup Weekend of sorts that brings together sharp developers, lawyers and entrepreneurs who know how to build new businesses fast.

After all, the clock is ticking. If news outlets can't adopt a startup mentality quickly, many of them will soon be gone.