Being such an influential product for the "tech scene" (I've never really seen its benefit over visiting only a couple of blogs, they all cross-link anyway, but I digress), surely there'd be lines of highly talented young designers queuing to get the opportunity to redesign Techmeme for free?
I know sites have to make money, but the sponsored area detracts massively from the main stories and is the main area of focus, the page doesn't scale well at all, the font's too small and the characters are too close together.
In a world where The Verge and TechCrunch will cover (I'm guessing) 80% of the stories featured on there, there has to be something compelling to get people scanning, and I don't think this redesign is it.