I heard a long time ago that newspapers are written at the 8th grade level. Wonder how dim politicians are ranked considering their voter’s education level.
Ditto here. That was quite a while ago. The intent was to make the content of newspapers comprehensible by the average reader. I'd say that today they'd have to be at the 5th grade level to achieve the same. However, based on what I see from "journalists" that's not a downgrade for them but more of a stretch.