View filtered by taxonomy term - is there a better way?
Create a view with an exposed filter for each News category.
Under its settings, in Admin, there is a Filter identifier which can be changed. This goes after ? in the URL.
Build your menu to link to the new view and add the category after the filter identifier.


The benefit of this is you can do it with any view so your tpl will work. And users can change category quickly using the dropdown menu. Or you can hide the exposed filter with CSS and make them use the menu.