If you were gonna look at a list of blog posts that have hero images that are mostly just for visual interest, would you prefer to scan a list of them with those images, or only the actually relevant information for the post? 
Just for context, my current implementation does include a small thumbnail for each post, though I think maybe the skinny crop of each image might be exactly the thing for this new implementation?? 
Here's the new design with a very similar, skinny-crop thumbnail image. Maybe this is the way? 
I think this is the direction I'm presently headed in, per
@DuaneKing
's suggestion — no images for scannability, with a hover state image reveal that appears behind the cursor. 
