Text, a picture with its own caption and its own credit, a quotation, a video, or something embedded from elsewhere. You add, reorder and remove them; the design decides how each is drawn.

This is deliberate and it surprises people. An article with no picture is never fetched for a list — not hidden, not unpublished, simply not asked for, because a block of cards with holes in it reads as broken however good the words are. Give it a picture and it appears everywhere immediately.

A date in the future means exactly that: the article is not live until then, everywhere, including in the feeds and the sitemap. It is one rule in one place rather than a check each screen has to remember.