Here is a link to a honolulumagazine.com article which outlines two on-line journalism organizations which cover Hawaii.    

Realneo - in terms of how it is "financed" (ie. all donations of money and content-providing-time -  no advertizing on Realneo), is different than both the Civil Beat (funded from wealthy civic-minded citizen) and the Hawaii Reporter (funded with on-line adverts).     In terms of Realneo's monthly unique traffic - Realneo is very  similar to the Hawaii Reporter; Civil Beat gets a bit more traffic than Realneo.

What efficiencies or advantages might be developed if similar on-line journalism/news operations were connected (say, perhaps, with integrated CMS software?)?

The Guild folks at the Dirty Dealer need to be asking and answering questions about how to improve web journalism/news - and let go of the obsolete,  inefficient, hard copy anachonism.   The Guild folks also need to be digging deeper into messy local situations - without considering advertizing revenue sources and crony connections.