The President's age is newsworthy. But 192 stories in 7 days in one newspaper seems like overkill.

Data guy Nate Silver disagrees with me about what constitutes good news judgement. Here's my response to his recent screed.

Nate Silver included my work in his curious piece, Blaming the media is what got Democrats into this mess.

Silver begins with a long defense of empirical journalism. As he put it, folks with reality on their side. But the piece is mostly a long complaint against those who wonder at the NYT’s obsessive coverage of Joe Biden age. Silver seems to think that a focus on the Time’s coverage habits rather than on Biden’s age itself is the real danger, and he equates that danger with the kind of lying that autocrats engage in to create false realities.

Um, no. A bit of an overreaction there, Nate.

I did exactly what you do. I looked at the data. I reported the data. The NYT published 192 stories about Biden’s debate performance in the aftermath of the debate. In that same window, the Times did 92-pieces on Trump with nearly half about the SCOTUS immunity ruling.

Showing my work.

I did not say Joe Biden’s age is off limits as a topic. I do not think it is irrelevant. I do, however, think that 192 stories and opinion columns on one topic within a 7 day period is starting to look like a crusade instead of journalism. Plus, there are other important and compelling political stories that get ignored when there’s a storm surge of news coverage like this. There are, after all, two candidates in the race.

The public seems to agree. Look at this data from Google Trends. It compares searches for Biden’s age versus searches for Project 2025. Turns out, people are more interested in Project 2025 than in Biden’s age.  

I know this is not a perfect comparison, because there are lots of ways to search for stories about Biden. But, just maybe, Americans already know Joe is old and are curious what a second Trump term might mean.

Instead of demonizing those who disagree with you or who dare to question the gray lady’s news judgment, perhaps you might return to the empirical work that your admirers still find valuable. Meanwhile, my critique goes to balance. 192 stories in less than a week does exactly what you said you dislike: it distorts reality by pushing everything else off the radar screen.

Jennifer Schulze is a Chicago journalist talking about journalism. You can read her columns here and at Heartland Signal. Follow Jennifer on Threads @newsjennifer_schulze or Twitter/X @NewsJennifer.