No, paperboy should stay, cuz it adds activity to the forums, people who don't visit the front home page, they notice what's in the news only thru the paperboy.
No. Someone (not you) never took a web technologies class in college. You don't show 40% of an article and then link to the rest of it. People get the gist of it at that point and have no reason to click the link. That's why the news column on the left worked. It was simply the title of the subject matter. If someone's intrigued by that, they'll click it. If not, oh well. This new way with paperboy is dumb. It's hit or miss and it reduces the hits on the streethop home page, guarantee it.
Also, I'm convinced he's a bot.