theorion.com of the future?

I've expressed strong opinions over the years about the cluttered mess most news websites present on their home pages. To me, it's the equivalent of printing a front page from the middle of the last century, when it was common to have a dozen stories or more on 1A.

The home page of theorion.com has been cleaned up quite a bit since the beginning of the year, but the straightjacket that is the TownNews template makes it difficult to make a really dramatic presentation.

Then I was looking at design-guru Tim Harrower's website the other day and saw in his promotional video a screen shot of The First Post, an online-only news site in Great Britain. The home page and subsequent section fronts do what I think news websites should do at their main entry point:
• Identify a clear lead story
• Eliminate scrolling
• Tease to the most significant stories in other sections

• Use menus to link users to the rest of the content on the site.

After an ownership change, The First Post abandoned its design for something more typical. But I think its original approach would be a terrific template for what theorion.com could look like in the future.

What do you think?