I have a theory about white space, particularly on info-rich Web sites: if you’re adding white space, you have too much going on with that page. I personally don’t believe that adding more white space to set things apart fixes the problem.
White space was a design ethic that magazines used to set themselves apart from newspapers. Eventually that moved to advertising. But it’s a style thing, not a foundational thing as most people try to do.
Moreover, the current Landing Page designs are essentially doom scrolls (“now with added white space…”), and that is because of the need to be mobile friendly (or as is becoming more popular to say, mobile first).
So let’s talk about the second screen shot. You have equal white space between the heading and the pull quote. But those three boxes are really related to the heading. By using equal space you’re saying that the three boxes are equally as important to pull quote. They aren’t. Your heading says what the site is doing, and the three boxes are your key pointers (at least that’s how I interpret this). They need to be connected (less white space). The pull quote and photo are actually bigger than the three boxes you want people to click on, distorting importance.