Drupal for this site?

Hi all,

Me and my partner are about to begin a medium-sized project that is basically a news portal, but with many community aspects on top; Member accounts will need to have the ability to post galleries, blogs and other similar features (from their own member-admin panels, naturally).

I've used Textpattern, Wordpress and ExpressionEngine (to an extent)... but, as you all know, neither of these are fit for this kind of project. ExpressionEngine is, actually, kind of, and although I could give a shit less about their "users can't have blogs" licensing, I think open source is the way to go.

With that being said, I'd like advice as to if Drupal is the way to go. I'm a designer/project manager -- not a programmer; However, I will have a hardcore PHP guru assisting me, and we're just trying to decide if it would be better to go with Drupal/EE/Joomla, or build this ground-up with a framework. It's a difficult choice to make, though, it seems.

Anyways, I'm really just looking for advice. If you need more information or details to give it, I'd be glad to give them. And for examples of sites with features like we're looking to have, you could check out http://www.sk-gaming.com (many of you might know this site) or http://www.gotfrag.com (another gaming-related site) -- both having many of the features we'll be needing. Like I said, general news portals (multiple sections, etc) and community personalized features.

Thanks!