Readers, Please Help Me Understand What This Graphic Means

I have absolutely no idea and it's breaking my brain.

Happy post-Super Bowl Monday, readers.

This morning, I saw something in a recent Semafor newsletter of Ben Smith’s that has been bugging me well into the early afternoon. It’s this:

Graphic from Semafor, no additional context other than the heading “Stat.”

“Sign of the Times: Mentions of 1619 and 1776 in the New York Times since 2019.” And, well, okay! Tha…