Here is some code using java 6 to get you started:

JSONObject jo = new JSONObject();
jo.put("firstName", "John");
jo.put("lastName", "Doe");

JSONArray ja = new JSONArray();
ja.put(jo);

JSONObject mainObj = new JSONObject();
mainObj.put("employees", ja);

Edit: Since there has been a lot of confusion about put vs add here I will attempt to explain the difference. In java 6 org.json.JSONArray contains the put method and in java 7 javax.json contains the add method.

An example of this using the builder pattern in java 7 looks something like this:

JsonObject jo = Json.createObjectBuilder()
  .add("employees", Json.createArrayBuilder()
    .add(Json.createObjectBuilder()
      .add("firstName", "John")
      .add("lastName", "Doe")))
  .build();

Here you get JSONObject so change this line:

JSONArray jsonArray = new JSONArray(readlocationFeed); 

with following:

JSONObject jsnobject = new JSONObject(readlocationFeed);

and after

JSONArray jsonArray = jsnobject.getJSONArray("locations");
for (int i = 0; i < jsonArray.length(); i++) {
    JSONObject explrObject = jsonArray.getJSONObject(i);
}

create a JSONArray like this. insert your looping object on list. Finally you will get an array please try it.

JSONArray list = new JSONArray();
list.add(val);

I believe that you're organizing your data backwards. It seems that you want to use an array of NewsItems, and if so, then your java JSON generation code should look like this:

JSONObject obj = new JSONObject();
JSONArray arr = new JSONArray();

for(int i = 0 ; i< list.size() ; i++)
{
    p = list.get(i);

    obj.put("id", p.getId());
    obj.put("title", p.getTitle());
    obj.put("date". new MyDateFormatter().getStringFromDateDifference(p.getCreationDate()));
    obj.put("txt", getTrimmedText(p.getText()));

    arr.put(obj);

    obj = new JSONObject();
}

Now your JSON string will look something like this:

[{"id": "someId", "title": "someTitle", "date": "dateString", "txt": "someTxt"},
 {"id": "someOtherId", "title": "someOtherTitle", "date": "anotherDateString", "txt": "someOtherTxt"},
 ...]

Assuming that your NewsItem gettors return Strings. The JSONObject method put is overloaded to take primitive types also, so if, e.g. your getId returns an int, then it will be added as a bare JSON int. I'll assume that JSONObject.put(String, Object) calls toString on the value, but I can't verify this.

Now in javascript, you can use such a string directly:

var arr =
    [{"id": "someId", "title": "someTitle", "date": "dateString", "txt": "someTxt"},
     {"id": "someOtherId", "title": "someOtherTitle", "date": "anotherDateString", "txt": "someOtherTxt"}];

for (i = 0; i < arr.length; i++)
    alert(arr[i].title); // should show you an alert box with each first title