Yes DotNetNuke can handle this beautifully.
We have helped a company which was using an older version of DotnetNuke a few years ago, and using just html modules to do their articles. We moved them to the
http://www.ventrian.com articles module - this product has been incredibly supported by Scott McCulloch.
We have built this site out in DNN with thousands of articles, publishers and customised layout.
http://www.insideretailing.com.au - this site is visited by many many thousands of people each day and is a testament to how a well planned, well structured, managed and deployed website and does work.
The authors are Mac owners, non technical and we have modelled this structure and improved it over time and have more new ideas implemented into it.
You will find also, a wonderful directory built from the Ventrian products as well which we have shifted from an original boxed solution that just didn't work as expected and the clients are very happy.
You can find alot more examples of how the articles module is handled by looking at the forums on Ventrian, but I hope this gives you an idea of how DotNetNuke works with an articles module - I think there are about 9,000 articles to date on there.
Nina Meiers