So if your site name starts with an A, like AnandTech or ArsTechinca , you're listed near the top. By putting a 1 in the domain name his site is listed at the top of the Yahoo listing of joke sites. A Yahoo listing is worth its weight in gold, especially if you're at the top. Your site must have unique contents. If you plan to just post news from other sites, you can forget about ever becoming a big site.
People can read news anywhere.
It's covered very well by sites like Voodoo Extreme and Blues News . Unique contents mean reviews and articles. Without it people have no reason to visit your site again and networks will never consider you. At first this will not be a problem, but believe me, once you start doing a few Gigs of traffic each day, your web host will either kick you out or force you to buy a dedicated server. No web host providers offer true unlimited traffic.