I am currently thinking about starting a local online news paper and am wondering what kind of CMS would be appropriate for this task?
wordpress. of course have to chose a magazine theme or news bulletin theme. wordpress is easier to seo
DataLife Engine, since it's main niche is newsites. Plus proper template (like NewsOnline, perhaps..) There's much more designs, though. DLE v9.0 release will come @August.
there is many CMS out there. You can chose joomla or wordpress depending which you can? or you can use as Satelx say