The whole principle relies on a custom post type, the only way to keep the look and feel of the website (supposing that a longform is not something that people are doing every day, especially journalists 🙂 I admit that custom post types have their limits in WP – untill then, no way to integrate monthy archives in it, it has to be done in the theme, so it could not be as independant as I wish – but hope that further versions of WP will consider this issue !
There are custom post type plugins which allow one to set the custom type as post or page.
I will read the documentation and see what’s possible to do !
Good. Be aware of previous work in what you are doing.