I was wondering if there was a way to do this.
I have a 17" widescreen laptop screen @ 1920 x 1080 res and the headlines are relatively tiny, I can't read them at a comfortable distance.
I know there's a way to change the preview pane font size in Settings | Configure Akregator and that there's also a shortcut for that (Ctrl +-)
However, that's not what I want...
I want to be able to zoom the headline pane font size.
At this point, even a few pixels between the headline listings will suffice. It's all a tightly packed mess the way it is.

Using Akregator (and KDE) 4.7.2 on openSUSE 12.1

Lowering my resolution won't work because the next highest that was auto-detected (in both Linux and Windows) is 1400x1050, which isn't a 16:9 ratio.

Can you please post a screenshot of what you consider the headline pane to be?
I fear this may require increasing the font size for similar displays across the entire of KDE...

First time I've used photobucket so, hopefully this works.

Also, if there's no other way other than changing the global font settings I'll just have to forget it.

Unfortunately I fear this requires changing the global font sizes. This can be done in System Settings > Application Appearance > Fonts.