2
well...
hmmmm
here is my rather round about way of going about it...
Have news blocks by topics (either use lykos blocks or clone your news blocks)
And then you can use a two column format (rather than three) if you use lcc, rcc blocks. THe trick is modifying those block templates to do what you are seeking.
You can modify any of the blocks as far as appearance based on their respective templates. So as far as I can tell the example you gave, has categorized news...
You categorize your news, have recent news by topic blocks and it should work well. You may have to mod a bit if you want the summaries. But thats as close as I can think without getting too much into it...
-so first mess around with lykos blocks see if that helps at all...? Or have you messed around with catzwolfs excellant wfsections? yet?
OK good luck!
