This is the lead story. It´s the first thing that catches your visitor´s eyes. Always the most recent post from the “News” category (or whatever category you define) will be displayed.

You can add an image like this one by using custom fields. If you don´t know what custom fields are, take look at the WP-Codex here. Only the excerpt of the article will be printed here for space reasons. You can also use an optional excerpt like I did here to have more control of the layout if you like to. This works also for the middle column of the homepage.