[Jarwain]

This triggered a thought; this puts emphasis on reputation, right? If there was an active redditor on a city's subreddit who builds a reputation for quality journalism, that kinda fills the gap.

But reddit doesn't emphasize reputation in that way; karma tracks activity and popularity. Some users can build up a reputation for a specific type of content, but that feels different.

Mastodon (haven't even really used it yet so just going on an outsider's understanding) enables both locality via servers (like the subreddit) as well as emphasizing identity/reputation (a la Twitter) so one could follow or otherwise tag certain users, allowing them to build a tracked and public reputation for quality journalism