Wikipedia's current events page is not bad for the big news stories: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

Not sure what to substitute for local news though.

An RSS reader that fetches articles from a few news sources that you like.

I've missed Google Reader for a long, long time.

Get Tiny Tiny RSS. It's a blessing. https://tt-rss.org/fox/tt-rss/wikis/home

Thunderbird has an RSS reader that works well:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/

As a non-Google Reader user, what did it offer that Feedly doesn't on the free tier?

Stats, sir. Stats. Plus, some killer search functionality obviously.

There are many alternatives now, Feedbin and Feedly to name a couple.

Digg Reader fits the bill

You kind of need something that highlights what is important

It isn't the answer you're looking for but it is all that comes to mind: Drudge.

greasemonkey to the rescue!?!?

taking off all the padding seems to help somewhat