I've had similar problems with the NTP release. I ended up using 'foreign' for that and other reasons.
I have also since decided to have 3 files in the top-level directory. The NEWS file is now high-level release notes. The ChangeLog file is now a human-edited list of short changes (one liners describing each bug fixed, new features, etc). The CommitLog file is auto-generated from our code-management system. This mostly works well enough for me now. Mostly. H
