Adding description and other information to channels This might be a little difficult to explain thoroughly and correctly, bear with me. :)

The Problem

The news website I'm working on has different categories based on topics, location, and "genres" (news, editorial, press release, etc). In addition, we also have other channels that work independently from the primary articles.

I am having a difficult time finding the best approach to provide information such as heading, description, a cover image, etc — for these different channels in a way that is organized, makes sense and can be easily edited from the CP.

Example


The Main channel could have an image and a description which states that the articles in this section are written by the members of the company.
A channel managed by a writer from the community could also have its own cover image and description stating that this channel contains chronicles and critics by him and other authors.
A channel managed by a collaborator/correspondent could focus on a specific topic, such as technology; the image and description of the channel would explain this.
Another channel could provide news related to the company alone.
Another channel could be from the developers in the team.
etc...


Note how these secondary channels are different from the main content. These should not be mixed together and are often accessed by different users.

So... Has anyone dealt with this problem? How have you solved it? I have a few ideas in mind but I'd like to see what other practices are out there.
I have a channel of index pages, where each entry in the index page channel serves as the index page for some channel. I use ljdynamic fields and have a 'chanel' field which is a dropdown to select the channel. Description and etc. could be other fields in this index page channel.