I think "news" here correlates to organizations deep in the "news cycle" whereby some organization decides some goings-on of local people is a worthy national topic. HN is one or two layers removed from this; quite literally there's a crowd deciding what you see at a given moment is relative or not for consumption. This is the same effect of hearing about important events from other people and choosing to look into them further or looking into them after the topic is more settled.

The real problem these users are describing is separation from the news cycle where most elements in the cycle are overstated or irrelevant to most users but are put in front of them anyway with very "this is important" language.