I think it would help if the rules were clearer. I propose the following additions to the current rules:
1. Official news agencies only. No blogs. No "cryptomedia" sites.
2. Don't just post the article. Include some of your own thoughts and insights about the article and/or the impact the news will have. This will minimise the potential for low-quality posters to abuse it.
+1. It would be a shame to see the board go entirely - since one line spammers tend to avoid the Press board, when an interesting article is posted, the discussion it generates is usually of far higher quality than you would get in Bitcoin Discussion. Now ideally, we should strive to improve the quality of the posts in Bitcoin Discussion, but in the meantime, the Press board does have a purpose provided the above rules are implemented. If not, then sure, shut it down.
I'm against auto-locking topics. Often in boards like Technical Discussion and Technical Support it is far more useful to bump a previous topic dealing with the same issue than to open a brand new thread and have people rehash all the same answers again. If it's a spam post, report it. If the entire thread is spam, report the first post and ask for it to be locked.