Blog/News Module Status & Add News Form Ideas

I am just curious as to the status of the blog/news module. I am considering stripping down the add content form to just the barebones and calling it something like add news (it would automatically go in the right folder) but I would have to hack the core. If the blog module will not be ready in the near future, how would I go about creating this as a module (that way the modx core remains stock)?