On a tangent you prodded me towards an insight: as mentioned other places news might not be what we lack, but journalism. And for tech news, hn does a great (or ok) job of doing a "collective writeup" of many news items. True, the discussions can get side-tracked - and are often more speculation than analysis. But on any given "news like" story there tends to be enough background and insight to sum up to the content of a decent article on the given event/revelation.

No-one actually writes it up, so you might average 150-200% more text than a great article - on the other hand some bias will be balanced out.

I'm not sure machine learning is (will ever be?) a good fit to fill in the role of journalist. But I think hobbyist/specialists dedicating a bit of time to commenting paired with a handful of people writing up the emerging concensus could be at least as good as much current mainstream media. I think that's true whether the experts knows the ins and outs of circuit design or schoolboard and neighbourhoods in a corner of Afghanistan - and who's gotten monetary support to build schools or something.

I do.