AFAIK, Verizon still supports some newsgroups, but only ones in the hierarchies it considers respectable. I moved over to Eternal September when that happened, and still use it without difficulty.

rec.music.folk still exists, but there is almost nothing on it. It used to be lively. For a while, I thought of the Mudcat Cafe as the monster that ate rec.music.folk, but I have gotten used to it. I appreciate its complete archiving, but its unstructured threads still annoy me occasionally.