I dunno. I agree that readability is important, but I love the impact that creative design can have on the reader too. The pictures in this story, and creative design decisions like draping the whole thing in shades of black (echoing the blackness of coal and the polluted industrial sky) highlight the story's horror.

There's room for both approaches; print magazines have long ranged from those with utilitarian layouts to those with lavish, creative layouts, after all. So there's no reason to assume the Web can't be the same.