i made several news site and let me tell you wordpress is a joke. go for joomla but expect to write some php hacks or your own mods for specific needs. forget about Drupal unless you know php and the drupal framework. in any case i can't see any killer features in drupal that can't be found in joomla apart integrated taxonomy and node based content, dont worry, you'll hardly need 'em for news sites anyway unless you want it "bloggish". now that joomla have several addons for CCK-like features it's simply a waste of time to stick with Drupal and it's ugly architecture. performances : any CMS will be sluggish if you make pages weighing 2MB each ! cut the crap out, use CSS "sprites", use a decent server, and see the difference...
If you're clued up with some php knowledge and good at trouble shooting (or being able to search and find the answers to your problems) then Pligg works great. Be sure to join the pligg forum so you can network with other users.
if you think more visiual site go with joomla-drupal but it gets some more problems if you compare with wp. Wp is the best for a simple news site. as far as i know.