to make it not a link any more, in line 132 of the index.php page of the news module
change this:
$story['title'] = $sarray[$i]->textlink().' : '."<a href='".XOOPS_URL."/modules/news/article.php?storyid=".$sarray[$i]->storyid()."'>".$sarray[$i]->title()."</a>";
to this:
$story['title'] = $sarray[$i]->textlink().' : '.$sarray[$i]->title()."";