What you described, is basically what the gallery section is for... 

"+ A highlight of some sort in the news page for well made and underwatched series similar to how it worked in the old site." This, we are still doing... News begins again, the 28th..

The other two can be associated with the custom tabs, everyone has been pushing mahz for...

So, in other words you basically want to split the image gallery from the writing gallery... which seems mostly pointless to me.