You have a whole heap of space, why would you overlay the text over the image, it also feels like their is more advertising space than content space.

An ideal layout would be all one page, it would have the text nicely under or around the images. Even if the ad in the top and side bars was still there at least they wouldn't seem like the most prominent thing on the page.

The NYTimes does all this quiet well, they page but at least their pages are quiet long. They may even have the same amount of ads on the page but the content is so much more dense that it doesn't feel spammy.