We're rebuilding a sailing news site (http://crew.org.nz) and looked to use the blog module, with the front page as a blog holder. This would involve removing comments etc from code, and the archives functionality, and seems a good fit.

The alternative is to build a news section similar to what is constructed in tutorial 2 with article page and an article holder. We're deliberating whether this is too simplistic for what we want however.

Has anyone built anything similar, and if so; what did you use, and why?

Well I suppose it will come down to maintenance and future plans. Wordpress is super simplistic and will "just work" for most basic (and some advance) situations. WebGUI is another one I've recommended for users who are not interested in doing much programming.

Silverstripe is great if you have grand ambitions with how you can extend your site's features, but also has just enough to get non-programmers up and running. I've heard it's exhilarating.