I did miss something on the text length front, the settings in the plugin which seem to work.
Not only that, but making this value 500 solved the formatting problem with the News items. It must treat an image as more than 100 characters? It also doesn't show anything if you don't leave a value, and no sumamry text if you put a 0 in there. Strange, but happy it's working.
Ahh, trying the easy way. This has been a good use of my life. :-)