In my experience, not getting news is almost never the
fault of the newsreader, wven with possible updates
having happened (at least on *nix).  Like Troy, my
first suspect is the news provider, then firewalls or
other network issues.

Try this from a terminal window or console:

   telnet your_news_server nntp

(assuming you don't need a secure channel).

If you get a connection, try "help".
That will list commands.  Then ask for an
overview of a group you care about:

   group alt.guitar.amps

The response will look like this:

   211 5294 645506 650799 alt.guitar.amps

if all is well.

Then you can try:

   listgroup alt.guitar.amps

to get the available article numbers.

Finally try

   article 650799

(with a real article number returned in the
previous step) to get an article.  If it all
works, then you have an issue with your reader
or config file.  Otherwise, you have a clue
as to where the problem is.

-Miles