We actually don't know what Google News' algorithm is based on. I don't think they've ever said it's simply counting clicks. Heck I worked there for years and

We actually don't know what Google News' algorithm is based on. I don't think they've ever said it's simply counting clicks. Heck I worked there for years and I have no idea how News ranks things. Ranking one was one of the few parts of the Google codebase not accessible to all engineers. It'd be a much more trustworthy product if they did explain how they rank news stories. Newspapers aren't general websites, there are far fewer of them, the risk of gaming the algorithms is much lower.