"Just the Facts, Ma'am" No More IT'S a Monday morning in mid-January. Your print edition of The Times is at hand, along with your coffee. You scan it for news. But, for the most part, you scan in vain. Of the six front-page articles on Jan. 13, only one can be described as hard news: an article from Paris about negotiators putting the last touches on a deal to freeze Iran's nuclear program. The other five are: a reconstruction of the "Bridgegate" scandal; a news-feature story about relics restored to the National Museum of Afghanistan; an article about politics in Minnesota and Wisconsin; a setup story about Supreme Court arguments on the collision of free speech and abortion rights; and a feature about a high-end pawn broker. I've been thinking about this lately, particularly after hearing from a New York City reader, David N. Schwartz, who used as an example the paper of Nov. 26, a Tuesday. "There is not a single news story on the front page," he wrote. It's all news analysis and interpretive journalism - very good, indeed, but still not news as such. He added, "Compare this to The Wall Street Journal, which is really not as good a paper - but which has real news on the front page." In a recent online comment, another reader wrote: "There seems to be very little straight news any more. Every piece is more like a feature or news analysis; even those articles ostensibly meant to report events. In preparation for this column, I went through the last few weeks of front pages. Even in this digital age, I'd argue, the printed front page is still a strong indication of editors" news values. There certainly were other days similar to those mentioned above, where hard news was hard to find. Others offered a more traditional look. Often, even above-the-fold articles reporting on timely, significant topics - like the surge in sign-ups for Medicaid - did so in a roundabout way, with anecdotal beginnings: "Sharon Mills, a disabled nurse, long depended on other people's kindness to manage her diabetes." In that case, the technique was effective; at other times, I wonder when, or if, an article will reach the point, and I think of E.B. White's retelling of his teacher William Strunk's belief: "Will felt that the reader was in serious trouble most of the time, a man floundering in a swamp, and that it was the duty of anyone attempting to write English to drain this swamp quickly and get his man up on dry ground, or at least throw him a rope." In general, I found an emphasis on interpretive and enterprise journalism. I also found many examples of interesting and well-written articles with little news value. I asked the managing editor, Dean Baquet, who often runs the afternoon news meeting where front-page articles are chosen, to explain. "There's no question that there's less traditional news on the front than there used to be," he said. One major reason, he said, is that readers have constant access to breaking news. We have to ask ourselves what's new and surprising and important to people - what we can offer that no one else can. So we put pressure on ourselves to put it in perspective or say what it means or give the back story. For Mr. Baquet, the ideal front page would include three or four "strong news stories that nobody else has, an investigative story, and a couple of really good reads" - for example, a sports or culture story, or an especially compelling obituary. Some readers would like a more straightforward approach. Others believe that all that interpretation can too easily tip over into opinion. In recent weeks, readers have complained to me about what they saw as opinion creeping into news stories on Iran, Ukraine, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey. "I read both news and opinion, but when I read a news story I prefer news alone," said David B. Harris of Fanwood, N.J. Yet, in what may seem like a contradiction, other readers have told me that they want news stories to state clearly established truths - not to hedge with "false balance." It can be a fine line, but there is a difference between stating a well-established truth - for example, evolution really happened - and expressing opinion, no matter how well-informed. It's a line that shouldn't be crossed in a straight news story. In my view, The Times's most prominently displayed stories sometimes go too far in the direction of interpretation, analysis and elaborate writing. The reasonable reader, with only his coffee for assistance, might well wish that the important nugget of news would appear in the second paragraph instead of the seventh. That reader (as opposed to a journalist who is plugged in to changing events all day long) may prefer more of the original news and less of a "second day" approach. In some cases, a breaking news article that appeared on the website all day long, frequently updated, never even makes it into the Times archive, pushed aside by the more interpretive article that appears in print the next day but where the news is obscured. Mr. Baquet says The Times's primary focus is on giving readers that which makes them informed citizens. But he doesn't disagree that interpretation can go too far. Sometimes we overthink it, and we might be better off being more straightforward. A point of clarification: In my Jan. 12 column, I wrote that the first woman on The Times's masthead was Carolyn Lee in 1990. While it's true that she was the first news-side woman to appear there, she was preceded by an opinion-side editor, Charlotte Curtis, in 1974. Ms. Curtis's obituary makes for fascinating reading and might have been a contender for Mr. Baquet's front page nowadays. You can follow the public editor on Twitter at twitter.com/sulliview and on the Public Editor's Journal, at nytimes.com/publiceditor, where last week's topics included commentary on the coverage of a march in Washington and reaction to the cover of The New York Times Magazine.