There is a form of curation on HN and "editorial judgment" on HN and that's in the points a post has. A closer approximation of a newspaper would be possible by looking at the points of a post and maybe comparing that to other posts and then sizing headlines appropriately based on how "important" the HN community sees a given story.
The other form of curation is place on the front page.
That's probably closer to the editors choice in the context of HN.
Yes, I agree. I think I will change the design to have a hierarchy.
this is exactly how my 2009 version (in my previous comment) chose to size and space its headlines