<p>If I have a query to return all matching entries in a DB that have "news" in the searchable column (i.e. <code>SELECT * FROM table WHERE column LIKE %news%</code>), and one particular row has an entry starting with "In recent World news, Somalia was invaded by ...", can I return a specific "chunk" of an SQL entry? Kind of like a teaser, if you will.</p>

You can use substring function in a SELECT part. Something like:
```
```
SELECT SUBSTRING(column, 1,20) FROM table WHERE column LIKE %news%
```
```
This will return the first 20 characters from column
column