I'm posting this here, rather than in the green, because I know it exhibits huge ammount of lameness on my part.

Since you say no-html, I think that Blogger, or even LiveJournal, would do most of what you're looking for. I'm definitely no expert on this stuff, though.

"primary blogholder". is that a legal term?

Drupal would work for this (even allowing multiple people as admins that have the ability to edit layout, user permissions, etc.) The only caveat is that Drupal is not as user-friendly as LJ or blogger.

As for making it look nice, there are free themes that would allow you to customize the look/layout without html/css.

Some examples of drupal sites I've worked on/been a part of:
my wedding website
a group blog for a group of internet friends

My caveat with Drupal is that you need a website host that will let you install it, so someone does need some kind of knowledge about doing that kind of stuff. And some themes are easier than others in terms of customizing layout - I've played with some drupal installations that are really frustrating to work with and others that have been a joy.

I'm actually in the middle of moving a group blog over from Blogger to Wordpress (self-hosted), so I've become familiar with the pros and cons.

Blogger is definitely easier to use with little/no HTML; it's got a very good selection of default templates and a built-in page editor that lets you drag and drop and alter colours easily. If you mark someone as an "admin", they can change the layout, edit posts, invite writers and so on; primary blogholdership isn't an issue as far as powers go.

Wordpress also has templates and is fairly tweakable BUT I'm finding it a more advanced option; it has a large number of templates but installation of them requires them to be plunked into a specific directory and it's a lot harder to make a template from scratch (so far; I could totally be missing something.) It does have something like five user privilege levels, starting at "subscriber" and going all the way up to "administrator". I'm liking the challenge so far but for someone in your position I think Blogger makes more sense.

LiveJournal I'd stay away from, especially since it now requires ads on new accounts and any advanced template options will cost you (and be a big pain in the ass).

best of luck!

'Group blog' always sounds orgy-esque to me.

Ning is a "social network" thing I saw mentioned on AskMe that you might want to look at. I know zero about it, but bookmarked it to check out later. Even though the examples they feature have a lot more than you want, the "about" info says it's "infinitely customizable" - so it ought to offer the option to just go with a few key features.