[pclmulqdq]

Presumably if more than the 30 people who show up care about the city council, then there will be someone who reports about it and writes something up, maybe like a substack, about it. Maybe they will call it something pretentious like "The $city Times" or "The $city Chronicle" and combine that newsletter with other topics of local interest. Maybe they will innovate a physical delivery format, too, that delivers the news on paper. Then they can really charge people for it.

This is literally all just a question of supply and demand. The only people who care show up, and the rest wouldn't even spend $2 on a local newspaper.

Also, you don't have to go to the meeting to know what happened there: all of these councils and committees produce minutes that are accessible from your city's website. I bet out of that city of 1 million, only 2x as many people read the minutes of the city council (which are almost always public) as go to the meeting. The production of those minutes is a public service.

[text0404]

this is just local journalism, except from some random blogger and not trained journalists.

[pclmulqdq]

Journalists didn't have a college training program until about 50 years ago. This used to just be "journalism."