Whoever takes the final Hutton rap - be it the departing Campbell, Hoon, Gilligan or Blair - three weeks of baleful inquiry have added another name to the charge sheet, one that many editors, in their heart of hearts, already despise.

'God, I hate the Lobby', one senior editor (tactfully shielded here by Lobby rules) said the other day. He is not alone.

How, Lord H occasionally inquired as his investigation rattled on, was the news brought from Aix to Ghent? How did anyone who was anyone soon know the name was Kelly? Because they heard it on the grapevine. Because a Lobby journalist traditionally speaks to his office, then goes to the bar, where his confrères gather. Because what comes around goes around the Palace of Westminster pretty damn quick. Because - like some Masonic order - it is a brotherhood that serves two masters.

And modern technology has made that ancient bind worse than ever. Amongst the thousands of documents vouchsafed to Hutton, there are routine examples of the Lobby art. Phil Webster of The Times is following tip, so he emails Alastair. Is it a lady from the FO now living as a nun in South Africa? (I exaggerate a little, but not much). And the Prime Minister's director of communications, allegedly the third biggest cheese in British governance, is tapping the 'reply' button in a trice. 'Wrong,' he says, rather like Chris Tarrant shutting up shop at £32,000. Catch me if you can.

There are two points here. One is the nature of this electronic information. Do the heirs of Watergate claim their salary for emailing Tony Blair's press spokesman, and trusting him to be a good chap when he replies? Or - point two - are they already playing favourites?

We know Campbell has played favourites through his years with Blair; and if we didn't, one of his sidekicks, Godric Smith, made it utterly clear when he gave inquiry evidence. Should the name Kelly be leaked to a compliant correspondent? Alastair was all in favour, until Godric and Tom (Kelly) talked him out of it. They knew instinctively the parts that Lobby should never be allowed to reach.

What can you say - freedom of informationwise - about a 'system' that trades leaks for favours, that puts some inside the circle of beneficence and leaves others (and their millions of readers) on the outside? Guns for butter, scoops for butterings up. It has always been an uneasy equation. It looks plain rancid now. And people, at last, are putting two and two together.

The other day, in the Financial Times, Tony Blair's already departed deputy press secretary, Tim Allan, tried to call time on the whole charade. 'Trust', he said, implies 'something formal, fair and open'. So does 'regaining trust'.

So: no more 'pre-briefings' about the majestic legislation about to be unveiled in Parliament a few hours after tame newspapers - or broadcasting networks - have had their moment of slightly spurious glory. And no more 'government spokespeople briefing anyone off the record. Anybody in a government press office should expect everything said to a journalist to be attributed to a spokesperson'. Thank you, and goodnight, Mr Mitty.

Allan, who now works mostly in corporate PR, has a non-political model from his new life in mind. Lobby leaks can move stock markets, so why not apply broadly the same rules as the Stock Exchange? 'Broadcast and webcast Number 10's twice-daily briefings ... so everyone can see at the same time what the Government is saying.' The present formal summaries of what was said, posted much later, are useless because 'excitable correspondents' have long since run out and provided 'their interpretation' of what was announced.'

In short, the new AC (After Campbell) team in Downing Street need to adopt a totally different approach. They need to create 'their own medium' for putting out the unvarnished facts as they see them, in contrast to a frenetically spinning press. They need to serve everyone simultaneously, regardless of creed, news desk or proprietor. They need to cut chattering 'senior sources' down to size by making sure that anyone who does chatter is, automatically, no senior source. They need to realise that 'it is journalists - the purveyors of information to the public - who benefit most from the current secretive approach'.

There, perhaps, you have it. Who wins from the tit-bits scattered to chums, the names dropped in friendly ears, the email game of Hunt the Mole? Who's in control if, as we now see, it isn't the control freaks? The Allan prescription would still sanction lunches at the Garrick Club and drinks with gabby MPs, still extend a curtain of anonymity to those political players who wanted it, still give wisdom and intuition their head. But it would also get the cardboard tanks off Number 10's lawn. No spin, we win. Everything we have to say, we say in the open.

Will David Hill, the touted successor to Campbell, buy this formula? Could Honest Tony, on Thursday's shimmeringly sincere form, put the black arts away with their supreme magician? Of course it's almost certainly a leap too far. Why slay the sly fox who can set the chickens in the hen coop clucking? Why, if you're Hill, neuter your input and output from the start?

But the idea isn't, in fact, anywhere near as impractical as it sounds (as editors themselves might tacitly agree). Many of them, for instance, are ragers against the evils of spin and the unfairnesses of the old pals' act. Well, here's the act abolished. How can they scream? How can they push aside the offer of a rather more transparent, rather more credible kind of political journalism where you, the reader, have access to the facts and can test your interpretation against the conclusions your political editor draws for you?

That isn't just the way Hutton points, it's the Hutton way, pavilioned in emails marked Top Secret on a website groaning under the strain. The compelling thing here is the weight of public interest in politics itself (80,000 site visitors a day) because the facts can be accessed straight - not 30 years on - and because the filter of interpretation is only an optional, often frail, extra. You don't need to be an expert to play this game. On the contrary, you can often leave the 'experts' for dead as they change the plot with every day's transient headline. Hoon passes buck to Blair as crisis looms. No, wait a minute: Blair says buck belongs to him, anyway. Semi-collapse - yet again - of stout theory. Consider why that should be so.

Since Alastair Campbell first raged to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, the press - and thus the Lobby - has been split down the middle, roughly a third of them taking the Campbell case, a third seeing only bullying deceit from the Number 10 spinners. How do you patch the rift? Find a compromise victim, of course: so the Sun and the Mail both fall on Hoon with a will after the Defence Secretary's testimony. The man who was never there.

But where is truth in this endless paper chase? Did the packs ever stop to ponder? Does Hutton himself read the papers from day to day? The moment his report is published will be a salutary lesson for all concerned. Not just 'Who got it wrong?' but 'Did anybody get it right?' The Lobby, remember, exists to serve the people back at the ranch who put papers together and the people who buy their wares. But, so far, the best guides - like Richard Norton-Taylor of the Guardian - have been lone hands thinking for themselves. And the thinking, after Alastair, shouldn't stop there.