Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) addressed that question by discussing his legislation, the "Newspaper Revitalization Act." His bill would allow newspapers to operate as non-profits, ditching tax obligations, while making subscriptions and donations to the newspapers charitable contributions. Tangentially, Cardin added that as 501(c)(3)s, newspapers would, of course, not be able to endorse federal candidates for office, but could still editorialize.

At issue for the remainder of the hearing was the value and cost of news gathering and whether newsrooms are helped or hurt by online aggregators like Google and The Huffington Post. Those and other websites reproduce portions of newspapers' original content for free under "fair use" rules, while usually linking out to newspapers' websites where readers can go to full articles.

"Some Internet operators routinely take a free ride on the investments that newspapers are making in local journalism," said James Moroney, CEO of The Dallas Morning News.

David Simon, the creator of "The Wire" and a former Baltimore Sun reporter, declared that "high-end journalism is dying," and described the "leeching" of information from professional newsrooms to "amateurs," "so-called journalists" and bloggers. (No offense taken by The Capitolist.)

Seated three seats away from Arianna Huffington and at the opposite end of the table as Google's wünder-search V.P., Marissa Mayer, Simon declared, "The parasite is slowly killing the patient."

The response from the women: Newspapers must innovate or die. "I was not around when the printing press was invented," said Huffington. "But if I were around, I imagine the people dealing with stone tablets would have had a similar argument, saying, if you just left us alone and just forgot about that printing press, we could charge you for this."

Mayer also pushed back against Moroney's initial assertion that search engines like Google's are bad for newspapers, explaining that publishers can easily opt-out of inclusion in Google's search results. "Most newspapers, in fact, prefer the distribution," she said.

Sen. John Kerry, chair of the subcommittee holding the hearing, acted as negotiator between old and new media, but, at one point, argued with Huffington's premise that newspapers' expectation of being paid for content is antiquated.

"Why is it antiquated to believe they have a right to be paid for their product?"

Kerry's colleagues on the committee offered their defense of the industry and lamented newspapers' cuts to newsroom staffs and state house and police reporting. "Where are the editors?" asked Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO). "You can't say that the advertising online will pay for (newspapers') investments," said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX). "You can't say that with a straight face."

Among the newspapers' suggestions of how the Senate could help them help themselves were Congressional approval of anti-trust exemptions to allow publishers of different newspapers to negotiate joint business ventures, as well as limits on republishing newspaper content without consent, similar to rebroadcasting restrictions in the 1992 cable act.

If any consensus emerged, it was that it is too early to tell how news consumers will ultimately want to get their news (and how much they would be willing to pay for it), but that time has run out for some of the most storied names in the newspaper industry to be a part of what Kerry called "a brave new world" of journalism.

"Unless the news has value, unless it is treated like a product and unless it is treated as intellectual property," David Simon said finally. "It's over. This thing is over. It's all over but the shouting."