Displaying categories via a list field

I'm reading a bunch of threads on the forum, but am not quite getting my answer.

I've created a multi-record section editor titled "news_stories" with a list field named "category" for all the various types of news stories (headline, business, etc). The goal is for the website to have a top level page that then links to List Pages (and Detail Pages) for each of the category options.

Ideally I would love to only have one set of list page/detail page files on the server to maintain, but as I'm following threads on this forum, it appears I need to create a list page/detail page for each category (i.e. List Pages would be ...news/headline/index.php; ...news/business/index.php). Is that correct?

If so, when I'm in, "Admin>Section Editors>News Stories", it only gives me one option for List Page Url and Detail Page Url. How do I get around that?

If I can do this with only one set of page, what do I put in the "where" of those pages that allows the page to be used to display multiple categories AND how do I pass that information through to the page so it knows what to display? i.e.

list($news_storiesRecords, $news_storiesMetaData) = getRecords(array(
'tableName' => 'news_stories',
'where' => 'Category = "HOW DOES THIS BECOME A VARIABLE"',
'perPage' => '5',
));

I'm assuming the specific URL's on the top level page that link to the the Detail Page for each category would just have to somehow include the category information, correct?