[byoung2]

hiring a coder is going to be very costly once programming and design are included

You should start learning about coding now, not with the intention of building the app yourself, but with the intention of becoming more knowledgeable about what the developer's job entails. If you find a developer and say "build me an app" you might get estimates like 12 months and $50k. If you know that you just need a news feed, you can say, "can you take this jQuery mobile template and wrap it in Phonegap, and create a simple database to store a data feed from the following sources, you might be able to get it done in a few weeks for $300 [1].

https://medium.com/@morphmail/the-first-300-a-startup-launch...

[coingig]

Good idea, I have some basic programming language but not enough to code something like this completely on my own. I'll start reading up on Phonegap and seeing how I can narrow down exactly what I want to get it a cheaper price as well.

That Medium story is awesome, thanks for that!

[loumf]

I made this free tutorial series for PhoneGap/Cordova (http://app-o-mat.com) -- it assumes you know HTML/JS (but not too much)