From what I have found, Gawker is trying to make the most popular stories more eye catching. This may have been a move to make their websites simpler. I personally believed that it took a little bit of time to get used to, and that's why I subscribed using an RSS reader.

Also, you can change it to a view reminiscent of the old view on any of the Gawker websites by going to the navigation bar at the top of the page, and where it says "condensed," hover over it and change it to "expanded."

Oh, and after surfing around Lifehacker for a moment, I found this:
http://lifehacker.com/5107655/lifehackers-condensed-front-page-view-now-live
Source(s):
http://lifehacker.com/5107655/lifehackers-condensed-front-page-view-now-liv...

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Everyone wants to try something new and exciting. Slate.com did a redesign a while back that condensed everything, added more Web 2.0 and it seems nice, but I wish things were just the way they used to be. Simple html. Ahhhh.
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My guess is it has something do with RSS feeds. I think the majority of people who are reading blog sites tend to do it with a feed reader of some sort and the easiest way to get someone to click through and read the full story is to only show a teaser thumbnail with quick summary. Otherwise the site won't get traffic, everyone will read the juicy tidbits directly from their feed reader. This of course would hurt Gawkers advertising mucho!
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no one was reading the stories only the titles and thus because views pay for operations though ads..thus redesign.
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Content websites make money based on the number of page views. In Gawker's first design you could scroll down the page and NEVER click on a link. Then they added a "jump" so that on longer stories you had to click through.

Then they added a page counter and paid their bloggers bonuses based on views not to the home page but rather the permalink/story pages. This lead to every blogger coming up with devices to get you to click through to the story (i.e. "and boy did she ever take off her....).

Now they have made every story one sentence and your are forced to click (unless you find the tiny drop down that say expand).

The result is people who would scan ten stories and leave now scan ten stories and click on two or three. This generate 3-4x the page views.

It's the same reason why a site like CNET makes you click next page FIVE times to read a camera review that could EASILY fit on one page.

As you can see I don't share this page view gaming style and Mahalo pages, Engadget pages and Mahalo Answers pages are nice and long and full of content.... which is MUCH better for users.

I'd much rather scroll (i.e. hit the spacebar or wheelmouse) than hit NEXT and wait for a page load--five times!

... not that I have any insight to this.
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the ad placement -- Yellowpages.com on my visit -- is probably more effective than the flush-right within content placement on most news sites. Because it's alongside catchy photos/headlines it can't be missed (especially when yellow). replacing a left side navigation with an add is always rather effective and with package deals to advertisers, Gawker is probably banking on having more consistent placement across its properties.

Just a guess, though!

As far as readability, it's very annoying. I have no idea where to go.
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