I like to read local newspaper like San Francisco Chronicle, it has many local news and some important world news as well. The good thing to read local news is, it provides great topics to chat with people, like the weekend wine event, International movie festival, weekend sale, new movies on theater, local sports(!!), etc. Besides, the stories on local newspaper are usually writen in a more casual style, which is the best example for small talks in most of the cases.

If you really like formal tone, go to cnn.com, it's much less fun for me.