Hey,
is there a possibility to send out emails to a list of recipients every time I post a new news article or new album?
I would love it even more if I could give my visitors the possibility to sign up for those emails.
I guess some mix up between [i]filter-comments[/i] and [i]contact_form[/i] would do the trick, but I don't know enough php to do that myself.
I would appreciate any hint on where else I should look for such a script...

There will be new filters with the 1.2.6 release which will allow you to do this. You would have to create the plugin that does this, though. Just a note of caution, though. There will be some changes made to the zp_mail function in the 1.2.7 release so that we can support mail handler plugins. You will have to update your plugin when these changes occur.