I'll try to give examples as i see it:
wrong:
http://www.cnn.com/
Where am i supposed to look here? Which news are important. I'm getting bombed with informations. First thing i see are a quadrillion links. So i quickly scroll down - and what is waiting? Even more links. Horrible in my opinion.
right:
(sorry haven't found an english site fast enough, maybe someone knows one)
http://www.spiegel.de/ (for the sake of the argument please ignore the huge advertisment. i have javascript blocked so it's not there for me)
I have huge headlines and subheadlines and can easily decide which article i want to read. If the headline catches my attention i have some previewtext which i can read. As further down as i scroll as smaller the headlines are and as more informations are presented at once.
Same goes for this newssite:
http://www.focus.de/
As for boards. Just from the first look an ibpboard does look a lot better and cleaner than a vb4 (at least for me that is). This has nothing to do with the colors used. It just does a way better job in getting my eyes to the points i want to see (kinda hard to explain though).
sidenote: the style you linked. i wouldn't call that clean and i am surprised someone did.