The problem of mass distribution will kill you, I think, in any major market. This is not to say you can't go print up 2 million copies of it and then distribute it to a swing state, probably for less than the cost of one of those glossy mailers that goes into the trash five seconds after the postman delivers it (unless the postman tosses it himself.)
But there are plenty of small newspapers across the US that are always searching for content. If they nab one of yours (with permission, of course) and print it in their 50k daily, you save the costs of doing it yourself. There's college newspapers that might actually consider reprinting a well written article from another small paper vs from a dying major city publication.
I donno. I've been down this road before. It is a tremendous amount of work without financing or writers (my wife and I wrote everything, pretty much, though our articles were picked up around the world.) It felt incredible when an article of ours actually changed things - one of our articles on a swarm of tornadoes brought a million dollar donation to a small town.
Six years after we ceased publication, we still get people asking if there's a new issue. We were on the floor at the DNC in 2000, as well as the RNC - But it was about then that we just stopped.
As for writers You can't swing a dead cat around here without hitting several competent writers. Fedora's work alone is enough to establish respectability in any publication.
Start the paper, publish a few copies, and then set up reporters in every major city. Handle their credentials. And then you can actually go to press conferences and ask those questions the drive by media will never ask.
Going with the premise above the financial load would be spread out across the country. Distribution could possibly be handled by the same people or others that want to participate.