Depends. Would you like original reporting based on reporters actually going somewhere and investigating, and not just reviewing documents in the evenings? Would you like them to have health insurance and a retirement plan?
Should the publication be edited and fact-checked? Should their website be capable of supporting more immersive style than simple blog posts: videos, visualizations, timelines, graphs? Should they host independently or remain at the mercy of censors at YouTube?
Would it only cover one city? One country? A big one like the US or an organization like the EU? The whole world?
The cost can easily range from $20 a month to $20 million a month.
> how much does it cost to keep the lights on really?
Well... probably more than $100 a month.
http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/08/an-extremely-expensive-cove...
I prefer the journalism that is more citizen journalism, a guy with a Wordpress blog and time to spend in front of a keyboard with maybe 50 people paying $2 a month on Patreon.
The joke of content is the price of it, how much does it cost to keep the lights on really? Does it have to cost thousands for an article? I can understand this if you are writing a research paper on difficult science, but working out what happens in the world for real, can that only be done by people paid telephone number salaries?