How I Keep the Topic of Aging Fresh
In 2009, when I took over as primary writer of a New York Times blog called The New Old Age, I figured I could probably keep it going for three years or so. Then, I’d run out of things to say about aging and caregiving.

Started in 2008 by the former Times reporter Jane Gross, The New Old Age has covered a slew of topics: various kinds of senior care facilities; health decisions from vaccinations (elders don’t get enough) to colonoscopies (elders get too many); and whether it makes sense to move into the same retirement community as your mother.

We look at broader social trends, like why older adults are getting arrested and shacking up more often, and why they’re not seeing dentists often enough.

Of course, aging ends only one way. So we also talk a lot about advance directives, hospice and other kinds of end-of-life care, and the slowly growing number of states with aid-in-dying laws.

Readers chime in via the comments section, sometimes in droves. Though we expected to hear mostly from caregivers, elders themselves — increasingly online — weigh in, too.

Column ideas come from all over. I read medical and gerontology journals and field suggestions from geriatricians and researchers. My physical therapist told me about an anti-vertigo maneuver. I hear directly from elders and caregivers via Facebook and Twitter. And I sometimes wrote about my father and his transitions, until his death in 2012.