I "Hate" the Slate redesign

I love Slate. It's among the few sites I read every day. The old site design may not have been perfect, but it worked. Let's take a look at what's going on now-

Ohh, the problems. First, you don't start reading the text of the article until almost 2/3 of the way down my screen. Second, the ads look MUCH more prominent. In the box underneath the giant phone ad (which is underneath the giant HSBC banner) is a special area for "Sponsored Links." The people who write the text in this area should take special note of my correct use of quotation marks, because they are ALWAYS WRONG. For months this box was topped by an ad declaring, "I 'Hate' My Yellow Teeth." What does that mean? You hate your yellow teeth... ironically? The current topper is just as good- " 'Murder Yellow Teeth.' " Umm, what?

So that was a tangent, but the point is, that box used to be much lower on the page. And this is a problem, because now I have to scroll much farther down to see the lists of most-viewed articles! Trust me, Slate web-designers, you need to have this box higher up. Before, when I would open an article off the front page, after I read the first paragraph my eyes would start to drift to this side box. There, your trademark sensational headlines would entice me to open 4 or 5 more stories in new tabs for later reading. Now, if I don't make it past the beginning of the article I'm reading I never see those links. This means less tabs for Slate, and more tabs for DListed. And I don't think anybody wants that.