Recommend a platform?

Hello. I am working on creating a site that is based on local information for cities and towns in a small state (making it manageable in terms of size). What I am interested in finding is the best platform to allow the following:

Multiple bloggers able to blog under specific categories (towns OR subject matters) via permissions. Comments allowed on blog posts for registered users.

Forums allowing registered users to post at will.

Articles to belong under specific categories (towns).

Link directories allowing businesses to add themselves (with PayPal integration). Ability to show links from the directory as sidebar links in articles and blogs which match category.

Social Groups for registered users to join and share.

AdSense revenue sharing for both bloggers and in the forums.

Ad management for banner ads across the entire site.

Basic navigation should allow a person to arrive at town specific pages as well as subject pages. So a person could drill down to Smallville (a make believe town) or drill down to Hiking. If they drill to Smallville the landing page should contain links to the forum for smallville, recent blog posts for smallville and groups for smallville as well as provide any links that are both smallville AND subject - "hiking in Smallville", "restaurants in smallville" etc.

I am having trouble finding the best solution with the lowest cost in terms of learning curve. I originally thought Drupal but holy cow that's a difficult package to understand. Joomla doesn't seem much easier. vBulletin would provide decent blog and forum ability, but the link directory piece would be difficult (maybe there is an easy way of integrating phpLD?) and Wordpress seems decent although forums would lack pretty heavily.

Any ideas or recommendations would be appreciated. Thanks.