I don’t know why it makes such a big difference which forum it’s posted in?
Every post shows up on http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/*/index
Are there really that many people navigating straight to http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/news-forum/index
?
A thread’s exposure is more of a function of people bumping it (as I am now). You can put a thread in Breaking News, and it won’t generate responses if people simply don’t care to do so.