Craigslist is another example. Dense, "ugly", but the wheels continue to spin. There is no magic bullet in design. Drudge Report's design would never work for

Craigslist is another example. Dense, "ugly", but the wheels continue to spin. There is no magic bullet in design. Drudge Report's design would never work for a product like Facebook, or Stanford.edu for instance - your design says specific things. Drudge is like a Costco; it's intentionally "raw" to give the (false) impression that it's simply so focused on delivering a product that they don't have time/don't care about design. Lots of approaches work for different reasons. The reason why you should avoid using out-of-the-box UIs like bootstrap is similar - by taking a generic approach your design says nothing...