Actually that will not work on the web site I am trying to do this with. There is not a side menu for news, the news is at the bottom and you can only click on "all news" or "subscribe" All news is news.php and subscribe is news.php#subscribe.
The news.tpl is basically for a side menu option for the news based on my understanding. I have tried the skin1/customer/news.tpl file but when I replace the <a href="news.php#subscribe" class="subscribe">{$lng.lbl_subscribe}</a> with the mail chimp code I get a smarty error. I know this is not as complicated as I am making it.
Mike