Questions about Google News

I got a blog accepted into Google News a few days ago.

Since they claim a news sitemap is not REQUIRED, i didn't bother doing one.

However, I am not experiencing those instant indexing advantages I hoped for.

Now I got a plugin for creating a news sitemap.

My question to anyone who has done this in the past is, can i submit normal articles to google news?
I know I CAN, but is it normal?

Does it really have to be news? I'm looking at posting info articles instead of news, but leveraging instant indexation.

Any harm in this?

Anyone with experience who did this in the past?/

Thanks

Congrats on your site being approved in G news..
Did you notice any traffic increase? what steps did you take in order to get the approval?
I'm working on a news site now, 30 posts so far and I wish to submit to G news myself.