What I find much more attractive and intuitive, when it comes to news, is a real front page, that echoes the old print newspaper front page, but pulls in extra real-time information boxes from other parts of the paper. There is a clear idea of a headline story, the size of each summary is varied, and it's full use of 2D space, instead of just going linear straight from top to bottom.
What I'm thinking of in particular is the New York Times http://nytimes.com ; since its last major redesign it has become very attractive and I have found myself spending more time clicking around within the site whenever I read it.
For comparsion, check out this old twin-list front page version of NYT: http://web.archive.org/web/20031203020804/http://www.nytimes...
This does also have to do with their strategy for fighting the aggregators (so it's not just a design question): 1) writing their own blogs and 2) syndicating blogs where they are short. Sort of out-aggregating the aggregators.
Some may argue that it isn't efficient enough, though.
They fit a lot of content on the page in a well laid out manner that I haven't seen on many sites.
disclaimer: I work for that company.