Just because a site doesn't have all the bells'n'whistles doesn't mean it's a bad site. The Billings Gazette site, for example....it's a nice modern site but it's slow loading, clunky, and pretty irritating at times. For example, making you answer "survey" questions in order to read past the first paragraph of an article.
One suggestion: Those letters to the editor....when they refer back to an old article, have a link to said article in the archive. I realize this might be a lot of extra work but it would be nice.