Content Management Systems

Sorry if this is in the wrong section...
Yes, I've been to opensourcecms.com and cmsmatrix if you're going to reply with that.

I'm designing a news site, and I was wondering what would be a good cms to use? I'm a newb in PHP, so I can't make my own CMS yet.

The main page would have news articles going down the page, and there would be an image for each article. Sorta like CNN. Then There would be comments on one side, with people discussing news and other news headlines. Archives are a must, as well.

I would need the content management system to be very customizable, where I can edit the code and get the effect I want. It would also need to be user friendly, so "regular" people could post news easily. And, automatic resizing of images to thumbnails would be nice.

I was looking into getting CutePHP News, have tried it out. But I'm wondering if any of you have made a site similar to the one I'm currently doing, what did you use/do?
As for CMS's, I've tried Mambo, but either I havent' spent a long time with it and customized it, or it's very slow and the templates all look similar (especially the navigation).

I've tried E107, which is currently being used. However, it's much too slow. A faster version of E107 would basically be it, with automatic image insertion with thumbnails.

try sourceforge.net and search for cms's there - they have quite a few that aren't mentioned on opensourcecms.com or cmsmatrix.

CuteNews or something of the sort...google it.

Wordpress.

Textpattern or Expression Engine.