Understand article in newspaper that's backed up (6)
I believe the answer is:
gather
'understand' is the definition.
(synonyms)
'article in newspaper that's backed up' is the wordplay.
'article' becomes 'the' (the definite article in English).
'in' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'newspaper' becomes 'rag' (informal term for a newspaper).
'that's backed up' says the letters should be written backwards.
'rag' back-to-front is 'gar'.
'the' inserted into 'gar' is 'GATHER'.
(Other definitions for gather that I've seen before include "Accumulate, garner" , "Get together" , "... will proverbially do this" , "Harvest or learn by inference" , "Assemble - conclude - contract" .)