How do you support multiple bloggers without multiple wordpress installs

Hi,

I would appreciate help in determining the best way to install WordPress to support the following use. I want to take advantage of the power of WP but I’m not planning to have a conventional blogging site. I am interested in letting users navigate through a large set of topics, where each topic has an associated blog. I am new to WP, but it seems to me that it may be built to support one person/moderator’s blog and all of the associated replies that go with that blog.

Is it possible, instead, to allow many people to moderate their own (usually very small) blog without having permissions to moderate other blogs? Or is it possible to use WP as a framework and just use the functionality of secure text entry, reply management, RSS support and other components and for me to take responsibility of more than one moderator?

I’ve seen WPmu, and that seems like a possibility, however, a little overkill. I am not trying to create a model where I create farms of blogs, so much as I am trying to get the basic functionality of a blog without letting one person moderate another person’s blog. You know, like an API library of some sort.

Any help or ideas would be appreciated. Thanks.