Tim, I was thinking te versy same thing today. Instead of having the template defined by the papge, it would be chosen from a dorp down list in the add news page, this way, I can have categories with different sorts of content, being served by appropriate templates.

Not sure if this feature already exists, but I would like to see a 'sort-by' option, where by on a category specific basis, you can decide to arrange posts by:
date, reverse date (as we can do already)

and then in addition:
alphabetical (AZ/ZA)
by # views
by # comments
by average rating (if incorporated within ratings plugin)
by # referrals

plus:

you could open a popup, view all existing posts in this category, and place the new post you are creating in between any two current posts, by way of numbering perhaps.

bws: I think if you make CN db backended, you lose what it has in appeal, if I were comfortable with Sql and the likes, no offence, I would be using something like MT or Wordpress.