One step up from plain News Items is Scrawl, a minimalist blog product that adds only two things:
A custom Blog Entry type, which is actually just a copy of News Item
A purpose-built Blog view that can be applied to folders or collections, which are otherwise used just as with raw News Items.
Here are both additions in action:
Scrawl's Blog Entry isn't quite a verbatim copy of News Item; Scrawl makes a few tweaks:
Commenting is turned on for new Blog Entries, without which authors would have to enable it manually each time. The chances of that happening are slim, since it's buried on the Edit → Settings tab, and users seldom stray from the default tab when editing.
Blog Entry's default view is a slightly modified version of News Item's: it shows the author's name and the posting date even to unauthenticated users—and in a friendly "Posted by Fred Finster" format. It also adds a Permalink link, lest you forfeit crosslinks from users who know no other way of finding...