Hacker News Reader

Local news isn't going to be pushed at you front and center, at least not until Google knows most people's home town (or most relevant town). However, when I google $hometown+news, I get a pretty decent listing.

Not sure if this works well for cities that are large enough to cause world news themselves. And, if you did this for San Francisco, I imagine that you would simply be directed back to HN ;)

Back when I was still buying local newspapers they had very little local coverage anyway, it was mostly regurgitated national news. And lets face it, there isn't enough local news to justify a daily.

The national outlets should team up with local newspapers to syndicate articles and provide a cut of the ad/subscription revenue.

e.g. NYT would team up with SmallTown, Ohio newspaper so that a user can subscribe to both his local newspaper and NYT and see articles on the same page.