I think neither a CHANGELOG or a NEWS file has a place in a git repo.
Every file in every commit should be meaningful for the given commit. These are obviously usually source files or even documentation of the current behavior of the software. The problem with CHANGELOG and NEWS files that they are not meaningful to every single commit only for commits that are tagged as releases.
I don't know what would be a good practice to manage change logs in a repo. I'm sure that it shouldn't be in a project's git repo though. Maybe having a separate git repo for managing releases would help, like have your original project as a submodule and keep release specific files in this separate repo. Obviously it looks more complicated but it's better than managing merge conflicts between CHANGELOG files when there is no meaning of the CHANGELOG for the merge commit anyway.
The ChangeLog file can certainly be cut, but the NEWS file? The NEWS file is only changed when a new release is made. Otherwise, the file is unchanged. I see no reason it should not be in the repository.
Every file in every commit should be meaningful for the given commit. These are obviously usually source files or even documentation of the current behavior of the software. The problem with CHANGELOG and NEWS files that they are not meaningful to every single commit only for commits that are tagged as releases.
I don't know what would be a good practice to manage change logs in a repo. I'm sure that it shouldn't be in a project's git repo though. Maybe having a separate git repo for managing releases would help, like have your original project as a submodule and keep release specific files in this separate repo. Obviously it looks more complicated but it's better than managing merge conflicts between CHANGELOG files when there is no meaning of the CHANGELOG for the merge commit anyway.