the new one is certainly better. when i saw the old one, i was really impressed with the RSS feed logo and thought would it be there in the new one. and yes it was.
I like the old one. I think that having the large image just below the header, takes away from the header, which is cool. I also like the fact that you get the headline, and an excerpt from the featured article immediately when the page loads (on the old one). Could you tell me how you did the "recent readers" from blog catelog to stretch across the bottom of the footer like that...I really like that