Because I have ideas I feel could shake the news industry up, even if it's just for a small niche of people. I don't really want to be a "me too" site.

Drudge Report was almost literally one single page of static html. I would say it shook up the news industry.

Your choice of tools (including blog vs custom code, PHP vs Rails, etc) doesn't determine whether or not you'll create a "me too" site.

One could shake up the industry with something that leverages blog software. Another could write an amazing piece of news-displaying technology and not make a dent.

+1. As a developer it's easy to take the old "not invented here" attitude, but you don't even know if people will be interested in your idea. Get it out there as quickly as possible with off-the-shelf software first. If it's something people want/need, your users will flock to it for the content. They truly don't care about the tech going on behind the scenes, especially as you're beta testing it.

What does that mean? Are you looking to serve news up in an unconventional way?

Yes. I want to use a news source that is built mainly around bullet points, short sweet facts. A news source that provides resources for it's users to do it's own research, but not overwhelm them.

I can't find this. So I am considering building it.

Build it on top of wordpress, for sure. You could accomplish something not-so-pretty in a day with Wordpress as your foundation. Maybe even faster if you use v3.0 beta.

Orrr in a few weeks if you go at it alone.