Great idea. I personally would like to use something like this.

However, I doubt that people would pay a subscription for a service like that, and maps don't lend themselves well to advertisements.

Its kool idea.
But there is already a website which does this.
http://www.mappedup.com/

I am not a big news reader though to help you might also like your app to tell people where the news came from and the context of it being written since not all content is created equal and to have a feed from say Reuters (TM) doesn't tell the reader much, possibly room for another mappedup concpet evolution.
Good luck
Have a nice day,

The mappedup.com site is gone now it looks like. I think it's a great idea, but I think in order to use the news on your site it will cost a royalty to show it and that will cut into and revenue you could generate from the site.

In this free news age, subscription would be out. However I think this ideally suited for targeted marketing. E.g. I click a headline of a news article in my area. The page opens with the news and is sponsored by a business operating there.

The difficulty would be getting the new articles themselves and the correct geocode to put them into Google Maps.

This has potential. I think there is a mashup that does this. See programmableweb.com.