Christopher Harper, co-director of the Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab at Temple University, said he could see newspapers adapting the model of cable television. In the future, wireless newspaper subscribers would pay a basic rate for basic news content, with incremental increases for more detailed packages.

Consumers who wanted deeper coverage - of the Phillies, or bicycling, or the orchestra - would pay more for additional news.

Of course, these concepts are not close to becoming reality soon. And many people in newspapers fear time is growing short.

But the experiment that saves big, traditional news organizations may already have happened. We just do not know about it.

Thomas A. Edison believed his invention of the phonograph would spark a revolution - as a business dictation machine. He was less excited about the idea that it could become a profitable means for people to play music at home. And when David Sarnoff suggested that radio - at the time a way for ships to communicate - could become a popular, money-making "music box," his bosses thought he was nuts.

The point?

"Media move in unexpected directions - often through trial and error," said Carl Hausman, a Rowan University journalism professor who writes widely on news and advertising. "While the invention of new media is always expected to kill old media, that doesn't usually happen."

After nearly being destroyed by television, radio adapted and thrived. TV put an end to general-interest publications such as Life and Look, but the magazine industry did not die - it sprang back in specialized lifestyle niches.

The biggest, most complicated problem facing The Inquirer is a bright young woman named Octavia Payne.

Or rather, her and people like her.

Payne is 20, a devoted rock-wall climber from Baltimore who cares about world events and studies anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania.

She has never bought a copy of The Inquirer.

It is possible, she said, that she has never actually touched one.

"I don't ever see myself buying a newspaper," Payne said. "I'm just so used to getting it online for free."

That is a core problem as the newspaper moves into the future. The brainy, world-wise students at one of the region's top universities should be natural Inquirer customers. However, the loyalties of Payne and her classmates lie not with a particular publication, but in an aggregate of information gathered from a variety of papers and sources around the globe.

For them, news is what appears on your computer, not your front porch - and it does not cost a dime.

The Inquirer and other newspapers have to figure out how to capture revenue from people who read news online, from aggregators who compile news stories, and from advertisers who want to reach Internet audiences.

"The reason GM is failing is not because people don't want to drive anymore - it's because Toyota can make a better car for less," said Mark Ranalli, chief executive officer of Helium, a writers' Web site. "Likewise, people are not consuming less news. They are just consuming their news in different media formats with different economic realities."

Which means you will not have to wait 20 years to see big changes in newspapers, according to people who study the industry.