I feel as if "news" is probably a bad thing for most non-professional designers. I want to know what my users are most familiar with.

I don't really want to be chasing what the "best" design professionals do. Rather I want to replicate the experiences I see on the most common web sites, the ones that I visit. That's often deceptively difficult, especially if what users are familiar with comes from sites like Facebook (that have large teams of professionals in both design and programming), but it's at least a common thing I share with my users.