I used to hit up reddit for the communities maintained by the major boxstore retail workers (grocery, hardware, and warehouse). Largely I find that anything big enough to call itself news anymore isn't. Best I have is some citizen journalism that I'm finding through webrings, and reading several articles mostly to make a tally of what they AREN'T talking about. I've tagged my local and regional official feeds to follow them without a filter (RSS in thunderbird, so almost no learning curve).