I tossed together a few scripts that I use on my site, one to import NewsPro into vbulletin, and another to take threads from forumid=x and display them like newspro (with a handy dandy comments link, no less!)
Check out:
http://www.dirgotronix.net/forum/for...daysprune=1000
Example of the news script is at
http://www.dirgotronix.net/ and the 'news forum' is
http://www.dirgotronix.net/forum/for...?s=&forumid=25
Basically all I do is post a new thread to the news forum and it shows on the main page.
I tossed this together because I too tired of newspro, it's just too clunky, and after I got hacked because of newspro's insecurity, I decided that the forum would be much more difficult to compromise