But if you found only one relevant article in the NY Times then either you were consuming radio/TV news, or just don’t care about current events.
Which is fine, it just means you weren’t the target audience.
A 10th grade reading level doesn't mean they only cover stories of interest to 10th graders or younger. It just means they they use a 10th grade vocabulary and sentence structure. Most stories in the NYT could be covered at a 10th grade level and still convey most of the important information.
[1] From https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/27/us/politics/us-debt-ceili...:
> All of this drama raises the question of what the debt limit really is... > > What is the debt limit? > > The debt limit is a cap on the total amount of money that the federal government is authorized to borrow to fulfill its financial obligations.
[2] From https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/09/18/every...:
> What's a continuing resolution? > > It's a bill that tells the federal government's agencies, “Keep on spending like you've been spending till we can actually come to some agreement on how much you should be spending.”