You cannot eat alone if you bring your friends to dinner
And you cannot pass private information if you don't show the information privately. However there is a common misconception on RPG about this, we see the "Dungeon Master" as some sort of "Storyteller" (some systems even use that word for the role), and we expect from a Storyteller words that weave a story.
We fail to see that directors in movies are as much of a Storytellers as writers in a Book, or Photographer (or Artist) when it put their art for show in a Gallery.
Do not limit yourself to words
Words are an abstraction that was created by men to allow communication between people. It is a way to convey raw sensory data into a form that can be shared with someone else. Therefore, it is always slower to absorb (and more prone to interpretation errors) than the raw input itself.
When Legolas spotted the group of riders in the distance, he used his eyes to make that discovery, not his mind, ears or any other way. In this case you could simply show to the player an image that conveys what he saw.
If your party has arrived town, and they need hear a music to know where the inn is, put the music on when they arrive town and turn it up when they succeed at the perception check, if they are making a sense motive check, passing down a note with a single word with the impression/emotion that they get from the check is enough. If it is a sense evil spell, a note with a drawing of relative position should do the trick.
If you start to use more ways to stimulate your players (and their characters) simply words, you will start to get from them more diversed (and hopefully more rich) interactions and interpretations.
What you need to be aware of
The main risk in going down this path is that you need to take into account the balance between anticipation and realization.
When the DM announce that Legolas saw riders in the distance, that builds anticipation on the other players for what is to come. That is a implicit promisse of an encounter (be it combat or stealth). If you remove this you will also build anticipation toward the Player that control Legolas, and if Legolas does not share it will not only kill the promise of the encounter, but also may build up anticipations for a future treason that may lead either to internal fighting, or to bogged down sessions because of in-party mistrust.
If you are capable to direct the anticipation of the players towards the story, then I say "go for it", if you suspect that your group will try to work secretively instead of cooperatively (and your story is not about internal disputes) then just don't.
Another thing that you need to be careful is to consider if this "DM Talking in place of character" breaks your group suspension of disbelief, or only yours. If the whole group buys it as something that needs fixing then do it, otherwise it may bog down your play just because they will not be into it. You can talk to them about and agree to at least 3 sessions (one to stop being afraid, one to learn how it is properly done, and one to decide wether you like it or not) to try it out and then finally decide if that is for your group or not.