Perhaps this will help her with the configuration.

1. Click on "Tools | Accounts"
2. Select the "News" tab.
3. Click the "Add" button and select "News"
4. The wizard will ask for three things:

a. The name of the service, can be anything.
b. E-Mail address, this is the e-mail address that appears in the "Reply
To:"
field when you post, many people use a fake to cut down on spam; and
c. The NNTP server, this is the address or name of the news server
its normally something like news.ispname.com. The ISP she goes through
will tell her this.

5. After that a folder labelled "news.ispname.com" or whatever will appear
with
the e-mail folders

6. Click on it then click on the "Newsgroups" button
7. Double click on any newsgroups you want to select.
8. Each selected newsgroup appears as a folder under the news server name.

Frank