Maybe HN is just the pamphleteer equivalent - but we need to find new ways of gathering round the campfire and sharing stories - newspapers worked well for a while, what's coming next seems to have the HN shape - and still we rely on integrity in our leaders. In an age of the blockchain as the guardian of our trust, I find that interesting.

Many (most?) newspapers have some stories that are very directly marketing for their advertisers - newspaper runs a story on bra-fittings and so sells advertising space to fashion companies.

In fact isn't this how newspapers work: they sell advertising. If the stories are "poor" (which characteristic is modified according to the target audience) then the paper doesn't sell and the advertiser gets fewer impressions. The paper promotes itself, wins pageviews and sell ads on the number of pageviews it's getting. Advertisers get impressions and the system feeds-back allowing the paper to grow, charge more and continue creating "news".

Isn't that exactly marketing for the advertisers?

Indeed looking at a NYT Magazine story at random I find not only regular advertising but the author's byline is also advertising a book. That makes me wonder if they're managing to sell much of the story space too.

In part I'd assumed that HN was created in order to provide buzz/feedback for YC companies and serve the purposes of YC (eg market information)? Indeed from the user perspective there's no way to know, with secret moderation, if any particular story has been "unfairly" promoted or quashed; just as with dead-tree publications.

E.g. obviously you have some kind of operating budget to pay staff, offices, etc. Do you simply not break it down into different categories ahead of time? With an organisation the size of YC I don't understand how you can keep everything straight without something at least semi-formal.