This is a simple wordpress plugin to show the news on the home page as a shortcode.

spring-news.php

<?php
/*
 Plugin Name: Spring News Shortcode
 Description: Provides a shortcode [spring_news col="4" nb="8"].
 Author: Benjamin Pick
 Version: 0.1
 License: GPLv3 or later
 License URI: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html
 */

function spring_news_shortcode_code($attr) {
	$cols = isset($attr['col']) ? (int) $attr['col'] : 4;
	$nb = isset($attr['nb']) ? (int) $attr['nb'] : 8;  
	
	$news = get_posts(array(
		'post_type' => 'post',
		'posts_per_page' => $nb,
		'orderby' => 'post_date',
	));
	
	$bootstrap_classes = "";
	if (function_exists('get_boostrap_col'))
		$bootstrap_classes = get_boostrap_col($cols);
	
	$rows = array_chunk($news, $cols);
	
	$html = '';
	
	foreach ($rows as $row) :
		$html .= '<div class="row spring_news">';
		foreach ($row as $n) :
			$link = '<a href="' . get_permalink($n->ID) . '">';
			$datum = date_i18n(get_option('date_format'), strtotime($n->post_date));
		
			$html .= '<div class="' . $bootstrap_classes . '">';
				$html .= '<span class="datum">' . $datum . '</span>';
				$html .= $link . get_the_post_thumbnail($n->ID, 'thumbnail', array('class' => 'responsive')) . '</a>';
				$html .= '<h3>' . $link . $n->post_title . '</a></h3>';
			$html .= '</div>';
		endforeach;
		$html .= '</div>';
	endforeach; 
	
	return $html;
}

add_shortcode('spring_news', 'spring_news_shortcode_code');