I like th news items as it means you dont have to go to each of the sites to see the news.
If it doesn't interest anyone, it will soon drop down the list.
The oproblem with the iStock one that brought this up is that it was there twice. One is a good post with a few comments, the other a dead waste of time.
I dont think I would look at a news page and I never scroll all the way to the bottom. Maybe if headlines were on the right between stocklinks and usertools so we could click through to a news page?