lots of things need to be publicly funded, and public print media is a damn good example.
more things are publicly funded than is often realized, like roads, cars, industry, war, resource extraction and human exploitation in third world countries so westerners can drive on the roads, play with kindles and iphones, and post to rabble. and although my computer is pushing 11years old there's still all the other electrical infrastructure, powered by oil, serviced by vehicles that were built with oil, driving on the roads made of oil, etc etc. many subsidies are simply that true costs are not factored in (environmental depletion, etc)
canada post used to subsidize small local print media via drastically reduced (~20% of the going rate, below cost) delivery rates. once it became a crown corporation, canada post got into junk mail delivery, and they did away with the subsidies - because local papers were competitors for advertisers, local communities be damned.
for news, i check out the online version of my regional paper (we also subscribe to the print, at a ridiculous ~30cents/issue, so they can continue to sell adds). i also daily peruse common dreams, antiwar.com, aljazera, rabble, and the agonist. i semi regularly check out a few other sites like ian welsh, coyote crossing, orion magazine, der speigal, and the dominion. i also subscribe to harpers and the walrus. books, not so much, but i like reference books. i did read alot of andre norton and such during my formative years.
oh yes, the thread topic. as others have mentioned, a progressive national paper is quite unrealistic in these times, given the costs. and, i would add, the disarray of the canadian civil society who would support it.
i think our energy could be better spent in digging in, strengthening, raising the production values and building the capacity of what we presently have (rabble, dominion, etc), and strategically influencing what we presently don't have (the globe, regional and local media, etc).
if we are successful at these opportunities, then we may, down the road, have created the expertise, demand and environment where a national daily could be viable.
i would also suggest that there's a big difference between a "progressive daily", and a "daily for progressives"