But aside from content, aka "King," your RSS feed is your best friend when it comes to Google. I simply asked them to index my RSS feed into Google News and was accepted, and now the news stories are indexed immediately into both Google and Google News, I can hit save on the story and almost immediately go to Google to read it. That won't work for everyone as they expect certain things from their news sources though, but it's worth asking, just read their rules first and give them something worth indexing.
Don't try to manipulate them though, they will penalize you heavily. Just provide good content and work on establishing back links, and you will do well.