I browse /new exclusively, and refuse to upvote most of the stuff on there because it's preachy or uninteresting. Maybe it's not that less people are visiting /new, but that a lower ratio of good-to-spammy content is being submitted. On a site with the outreach and notoriety of HN it's not out of the question.
I do the same because I'm usually looking for things others would miss. Reading something unpopular typically has a higher value because of information asymmetry.