You've asked a lot of questions here. And I can say that these approaches are all valid.
> companies that bury their blog are often tentative about it. Someone in the company has decided that it doesn't warrant attention - perhaps it's not ready for prime time.
> Industry-wide stand-alone publications work for some niches, but if you're talking about paper, they are old-school and dying. Digital magazines are one option I've used.
> Stand-alone blogs exist, but from an SEO point of view are usually a bad idea because your domain name equity gets spread across two sites, diluting it. For most, it's best to utilize the main domain name for all content, with subfolders for industry verticals.
> Hubspot like sites are curation oriented, and if you have the manpower to develop curation to your industry, they can pay off because you save people time and energy by focusing the news. Most, sadly, are horribly done.
> Content structure is hard to answer, but I recommend that you not stray too far from the path of blog convention - people are used to a certain approach - categories, tags, subscriptions, etc.
> Content itself is where most people DIE in blogging. Simply stated, they are publishing *crap* and you must avoid it. I've done a lot of thinking about this, and the slog of content marketing. Rather than repeat a bunch of advice here, I invite you to see these URLs where I've given it some proper thinking:
http://www.buzzmaven.com/2012/12/authorship-corporate-voice.html
http://www.buzzmaven.com/2012/10/blogging-success-engagement.html