[sethkojo]

Nope, I personally think it's bad design in that there is too much color in too many places. I don't know which stories are important and which aren't. Worse yet, I can't even read the headlines because the pictures are so distracting.

The linear model is much easier to parse since the stories are sorted. The grid model is not inherently worse, but they would need a better understanding of color to make it work. Maybe a bit less saturation to give prominence to the headlines?

[Consultant32452]

There's a difference between "pretty" and "useful." IMHO the Yahoo Food site is pretty while sites like Reddit and Hackernews are useful. There's a place for both, and each will attract a different market and use case.