I completely agree with you. Putting a new UI on news won't fix it, neither will new ways of aggregating and sorting the stories that currently exist.

But there are two sides to the equation you mention, that revenue from ads needs to be greater than the cost of content. I love what your company (http://ownlocal.com) is doing, but I also don't think you should rule out the other side of the equation. What if a company can create a more compelling solution at a lower price? (That's what we're trying to do at http://grasswire.com).