Where does the news come from?

The base plugin displays content that you manually enter into your ticker posts. I do sell extensions which allow you display other types of content https://codecanyon.net/collections/2868665-ditty-extensions/?ref=joemc

It sounds like you would want to look into the RSS ticker https://codecanyon.net/item/ditty-rss-ticker/5108479?ref=joemc

Thanks. Your image ticker looks good; ideal would be to have an image taken from an outside site article, with the headline or short synopsis right underneath it.

I suppose if I can’t have both, just the rss would be more important.

Can I input the sites to pull from, so it’s completely hands-off?

You just need valid RSS feeds from those sites. Once you add the RSS feeds to the ticker (and you set it up where and how you want it to display on your site), yes, it can be hands-off.