Git, merging, and News/Relnotes files

As a policy on a project that I manage, almost every commit warrants a change to our NEWS (changelog) file, which end-users can browse to get an in-depth idea of the changes that have happened from the last release. If it's an added feature, the changelog includes a description of how to use it; if it's a fixed bug, it briefly describes what happened. Internal changes may or may not get added, depending on the visibility of the APIs affected.

Something that I've noticed recently, as we've started migrating away from the ghetto SVN development model to the Git branchy model, is that this NEWS file ends up being the source of a lot of conflicts. Granted, they're easy conflicts to resolve, but still, they make a pull a little more complicated than it should be.

What would you guys, as experienced Git users, recommend in this case? Scrapping a NEWS file and simply drawing up the release-notes shortly before release (as the Git project does)? Aggregating the Git commit messages into one monster release log? Having the release manager add the NEWS entries himself, and mandate that no patch have it in them?

Thanks!