One idea is to develop credibility and reputation over time by contributing useful facts. It's not raw crowd numbers but rather contributors with reputation which will yield results. Think of StackOverflow but for news instead of computer Q&A.
Google news is likely based on algorithms and big data based on user searches and the # of times articles with keywords are getting selected. Nothing wrong with that, but far short of what an informed and active community can do. The two are complementary but quite different.