[lonewacko_dot_com]

I'm pretty sure that short excerpts would be covered under Fair Use. In any case, if you see a story you want to post, go to news.google.com and see if another site has the same story. If you see another site linking to one of these papers, point out that they don't allow excerpts. That might cause fewer people to link to these papers. Send fewer hits there way and they'll probably change their policies.

[From The Deer Stand]

Can't you "refer" to an article in the XYZ newspaper without actually printing an excerpt? For example, "According to an article in the xxxxx it was stated that......"