With News Manager Addons plugin 0.2 beta you can do display excerpts and dates in the sidebar, like:
<?php
nm_set_custom_date('%d/%m/%Y');
nm_custom_list_recent('
<a href="{{ post_link }}">{{ post_title }}</a><br />
<em>{{ post_date }}</em><br />
{{ post_excerpt }}
');
?>
(No need to use nm_set_custom_date if you're not going to display the date.)
I'm still working on this plugin, it's in beta. But it's usable so if you want to test...
(To-do: limit number of posts and excerpt length. Right now it uses the defaults in NM settings.)