My thought is more on the different side of this issue.

This kind of project would alway be a kind of pain. The biggest concern is really that, it is too difficult to make your application stable, as the the way the content being organized can change all the time, and parse HTML is not a very meaningful of extracting data. The value of this sort of software is quite limited.

Look at the big picture, the right way to resolve this problem is not to attempt it on the receiver side, but to have the web content organized in a more strctured way, and separate data from presentation more clearly, if the content provider wishes.

From a technical point of view, XML island would be the best choice I can see at this time. In this sense, web content is RENDERED through HTML, but the "data" (the news here) presented as XML island.

If you are interested in XML island, just google it.