There's a future-of-journalism conference in Austin. I'd like to insert a recipe, if I can, for the future of journalism.
Start by solving problems. In all likelihood the geography you serve (if you are geography-based) has awful Internet connectivity. Before doing anything else, you must take ownership of that problem. If your readers have lousy Internet they will not be full participants in the world-wide news system. NYT, NYP, NYDN take note please.
Work on your collective rolodex. That is the definition of who you are. The better it is the better you are. I'd be surprised if many current news orgs see it that way. But they will. (By the way you can start on this step before the previous step is complete. It might take years, even decades.)
Make sure you have in your rolodex a field called "Feed" and in that field include the address of your source's RSS (or Atom I don't care) feed. You're going to need it in step 4.
Make a river out of those feeds. Start watching that river. Tell your sources about the river, give them the address. About five minutes after that you will be jumping up and down with excitement. Five minutes after that it will be on your home page.
Congratulations, you now have a future.