I have set google alerts for my most important keywords and I do get some useful articles written on my niche on newspaper and other authority sites. Now I am thinking of making a new page on my site about "news" and creating new html pages under this section. On these pages I will paste the same article given on the newspaper site and at the end will write the source of the article. So I will have a new page under my domain, however the text on the page will be from the authority sites, but the source will be given at the end.... Now will that have any negative effect on my site's ranking? or will it help me? Please let me know your suggestions. The site is about education.
In this way, you can only able to increase the traffic to your site but not the ranking and there is chance to get penalty from the search engine to your site because of this type of duplicate content which you want to add on your site, so my advice to you is that write the same news in your own words instead of copying it from the other site.
Your idea is perfect but do not forget that Search Engines are very smart. You are pasting the same news article in your own news page section without even a single word tweaking might get you some visitors, but search engines might consider it a matter of duplication despite the fact that you are giving reference to original authority. The other point is about original authority's satisfaction. For example if you give reference link to Wikipedia or the New York Times then it's OK, because these original authority will not take any action about their content pasting and will happily accept your reference link back to them. But what about any less trusted authority like any other sites. They might take action against duplication and may unnecessarily drag you in problem. In a nutshell, pasting any other site's content in your own words will earn pure credibility for you. However, you can still do the same but you need to be very careful. It's all about the content and we all know content is king. Hope this could help you.
Yes, of course it'll be negative ranking if yo are direct copy from them. So I can suggest better idea, just copy and modify 'called content spinning'.