Here's a screen capture of my solution: ps3.gif.
The user would click on the particular news story they wanted to read and it would come to the foreground in 2D while all the other news stories would recede into the background on NURBS surfaces with the titles clearly visible. News topics that the user had shown interest in before would be animated NURBS in order to capture the attention of the reader upon examining the background. Back to the rest of my problem sets.