I live in a fairly small town (7,000 people). A long time ago now, we had a sort of labor of love local paper that ended up shutting down. (The publisher fell ill.) The only remaining paper option was a "local" from one of the conglomerates. Pretty lousy overall and it mostly covered what was going on in a local small city and some bigger towns. Wouldn't have been worth subscribing to. Facebook and NextDoor is about the best I can do although even those aren't very active.