I needed to put it on the so it didn't get in the way of another widget on my site. I'm pretty sure it worked prior to my requested name change, but now the newsbox doesn't really cycle anymore. Also, I took it out to see if the newsbox would work without it and it does.
It looks like scriptaculous (or at least a compatible version of it) isn't actually being loaded by another script, so the newsbox breaks. The "skip" option was only to skip it if you already load it on your own (or through another script) elsewhere. I suspect that, if it was breaking another script, it's for some other reason than it already being loaded.
Bottom line, you can skip the newsbox if you want, as I don't have the desire to debug it right now. :-)