How do I use vBulletin for news articles?

[GetGamer.com]

I'd like to use vBulletin for a new article system with commenting. Simple enough, and I know there are mods that even change the look a bit. But I want a very clean look that drops the "forum look" of most skins (tables with colored headings and borders).

I'm migrating my current forums from Snitz to vBulletin. I have an existing news system that I developed myself, however I never got around to coding a comment system. The news articles have a very different look from a discussion forum -- click here for an example showing the current article format.

I'd like to preserve that clean format, but power it from vBulletin. It seems like this should be pretty straight-forward, but I have a few questions.

First, I will have multiple categories of news articles. Would I setup multiple forums, one per category?

Second, I don't want the forums where the news articles are stored to be visible when people are browsing the forums. Is this easily possible?

And finally, I can create a skin that mimics the current look of my news stories, but how would I go about applying that skin ONLY to articles.