How about giving the option of a two column view for users with a high enough karma. 'Top HN' on the left and 'New HN' on the right. As a result, the people with high enough karma to flag would be more inclined to scan the 'New HN' pages and further improve the quality of HN.
Even given to everyone it could still be beneficial.
I personally simply forget there's a /new/ much of the time, having the option to have new posts passively presented while I'm skimming would be tremendously helpful.
