check out pingomatic

Thank you, MW. Not sure what pingomatic is, but I gave it a try and it produced an error (told me I sent a ping already when I didn't).

as stated right on their homepage

Ping-O-Matic is a service to update different search engines that your blog has updated.

Disable your ping function on WP and use pingomatic only when you have submitted great deal of new items. It's not probably worth dashing back to ping each time you submit something. A couple of times a week is OK.

So Ping-O-Matic is the only key resource? Does the adoption/positioning process with search engines just follow-up by itself (naturally) or do you still recommend to submit the blog to main search engines (basically treating it also a website and not just a blog)?

The best thing you can do is to get other bloggers to link to your blog. You should use the same basic principles for SEO as you would for a non-blog site. Good IBLs and good content! Get your articles listed on Digg for short-lived spikes in traffic. You said it's a news site....why would I read your blog vs. another? If it's general news, good luck. There are so many news blogs and most of the content is just duplicate or syndicated across so many blogs that you will liekly not rank. If it's some sort of niche news site you will have an easier time promoting it (assuming there are enough people who actually want to read about that kind of news). Where do the poeple who read about the news you provide hang out online? Go to those places and look for ways to get your blog listed. Post comments on other blogs.

No need to submit to the major engines. They will discover your site through links. If you are using ping-o-matic you are submitting to Google blog search.

My suggestion would be to use a "blog search" service, type in your main topic or keywords, and visit the blogs the service tells you are about the same subjects.

Interact with those sites, get to know the people in your niche and become part of the community.

After that look into "social networks" and learn how to reach even more people with similar interests.

Word of warning, don't expect to receive more help than you give.

So Ping-O-Matic is the only key resource? Does the adoption/positioning process with search engines just follow-up by itself (naturally) or do you still recommend to submit the blog to main search engines (basically treating it also a website and not just a blog)?

if you are using wordpress there is an xml sitemap plugin that will submit an xml sitemap to the search engines when you update your blog; i haven't tracked it myself because i installed into my baby blog from it's inception; but other bloggers have told me that it has helped boost their traffic after installing it.