Here's another way to approach the user's end of it: have them log in to their Google, Facebook, Twitter, et al, and shove all of it into a single stream. Let them filter by source, topic, relevance, time, and anything else you can implement. Record their preferences by watching what items they click through or spend time on or interact with, and your relevance sort gets better. Add other users' data, and you have a fantastic recommendation engine without ever making anyone rate anything.
Another problem to solve with current news reading is duplication. Even if you do want to read about Tiger Woods, there's a lot of duplication in the echo chamber of the internet.