Around Tompkins County we still have the Ithaca Journal but each edition seems a little thinner than the one before.

There is a civic-minded weekly, Tompkins Weekly which is mostly newspaper-length stories and makes it to public meetings, and also the weekly Ithaca Times which covers serious issues, often with stories a bit longer than newspaper stories. There are also some publications focused on arts and entertainment.

The two websites I linked above are donation based, and both are growing. I think this is a reasonably viable model for larger metropolitan neighborhoods and wealthier suburbs. Although frankly, I'd like to find a way to spread local news to all parts of the country.

The second angle would be some sort of aggregation play around local desires (e.g. a riff on Ben Thompson and Aggregator Theory). Google/Facebook allow you to target ads by geography and interest, which obviously eviscerates a lot of local ad revenue. But could there be another way to bundle & slice interests plus content? For example, you do local, irl interest (cycling clubs? garden walks?). Or perhaps you do an emphasize on privacy + irl experience? I don't have a great idea here (yet?) - but I refuse to believe there isn't something.

I suspect it takes a lot of integrity, stubbornness, or stupidity to continually plow resources into reporting out, writing, and editing eat-your-vegetables articles instead of reallocating those resources towards the content people engage with.

You’d be surprised what people will volunteer for. Some people are already attending those things and perhaps they’d be willing to report back.