There's no reason for both the story count and the story summary to be clickable. It's confusing because:
(a) It's not clear what the number in parentheses even means (until you click and infer)
(b) Separate links makes you think they lead to different pages
Also, echoing another comment, it's not really clear what "incoming" and "outgoing" stories mean. Maybe "new" vs. "stale"?
I admit that straight black is not quite the right answer either. A slightly toned down dark grey would be nice. And again, subjectively, I like how HN has a row of non-link smaller (lighter shaded) text under each listing, which I think plays nice for the white space between each item.
Noting also that this text is #000000 black, per the CSS. Maybe the background color helps soften it a little? Like contrast white/black is hard on the eyes, but HN is not?