Jennifer, I want this for a few scenarios, and it's not a core part of Moodle. Some alternatives:
1. Use RSSinclude to show the RSS feed from the News Forum - but there's a significant lag, and you are using a third party with a cost.
2. Use an RSS reader block to show the RSS feed from the News Forum - but this shows titles only, and is very limited in size and prominence.
3. Use the Latest News block to list the most recent News Forum posts - but it's not compact and is limited in size and prominence.
4. Use the Social format for your course, replacing the entire course page with a single forum. You can still have other activities including multiple forums, but you have to manually provide links to them.
I'd love to see something closer to what you describe.
The social format was perfect for our needs. Thank you so much for your response. I needed the ability to put HTML (a banner) above the forum, and I was able to do so in the description, so it was perfect. I didn't see that option until I added in a couple of posts. Thanks again!