I like that idea, Chad. In fact, way back in olden times when I was setting up the web site (last December), I planned on having the most recent forum posts displayed on the home page. My original intent was to use the Beer News forum as the place where users could call out beer related news and those posts would be highlighted on the home page as they were posted. Out of the box, it displayed all new forum posts, but if I remember correctly, the module could handle a filter so that only specified forums would be shown, so a beer news ticker would be pretty easily accomplished that way. But that piece of the forum module package had a problem (which I can't remember at the moment), so I didn't keep in on the home page.
The good news is that DNN's forum module is due for an update in the near future and I will look into this again when it is out of beta.