I recently found ground.news. it is an interesting news aggregator sight in that it combined multiple sources for each story. It doesn’t really answer some of your needs but for each story it shows you which sources are pay-walled and which ones aren’t.

I like #newsblur too. I have paid for it for years now (though it is free).

What I like best about it is that it caches the text and images of the site so I don’t get all the ads etc.

Every year or so I go around looking at others but always go back.

That is a very interesting site. I am in the US (but Canadian) and it is helpful to see how the smoke curls towards my area.