I've just started experimenting with news and agree it didnt work the way I thought it would at first.
First read the manual, to see how its supposed to work.
Turn on the News Management Module.
Configure it, and add a news listing.
Then create a message.
Unless you have people in your subscription list, you won't get much further, so add a sample email address to your list.
Then you'll see an extra section saying that it's queued, and would you like to send it to your list.
By default it appears in the menu section.
For me, it displayed the body of the message, which is wierd for a menu, so I changed it to display the subject line, and turned it into a link.
<a href="news.php" class="SmallNotes">{$news_message.subject}</a>
instead of the old
{$news_message.body}
I'll probably also get rid of the archive link. It doesn't make me want to click it. And it just goes to the news page anyway.
Wow. my first xcart code change!