>Well, this is the problem - it's often the only number that gets published, because it makes for a better story than qualifying that sensational number with the rather less exciting reality of sentences administered.

I think it's more of an issue that the truth is complicated and a journalist can't cover a story in the detail you might like without losing too many readers to "TL;DR" or spending more hours to research it than the editor has assigned for the story. The typical sentences handed down are by far not the only important thing left out of articles like this. The things missing from these articles could span volumes of books. And each one of them needs to be put into context. If you discuss the typical sentences handed down then they ought to be compared to the sentences handed down for other similar offenses, or to the offenses that have similar typical sentences, and a thorough treatment would go down the rabbit hole into plea bargaining and sentencing guidelines and the whole works. But given limited resources and limited column inches, instead we end up with heuristics like using the maximum penalty as a proxy for the severity with which the law treats the behavior.

Whenever there is a popular push to change the law, most people aren't going to understand all the details. People don't have time to learn everything about everything. At some point the layman will have to defer to someone trustworthy (like the EFF or the ACLU) to do the legwork and then adopt their position on the strength of their reputation. They need to get down into the weeds and make sure they understand what's going on, but they aren't the ones getting their information from popular media, they're the ones reading the statutes and the case law and engaging in discussions with scholars and legislators etc. Articles in The New Yorker aren't meant for those people, they're meant for the man in the street who needs to be made aware that something is going on and the people who have done their homework are saying it's a problem and we should do something about it. That way a critical mass of people willing to support doing something about it can be achieved, even if it isn't possible for all of those people to each be individually aware of every nuance of the issue. If someone wants to know more then the information is available. Anyone so inclined can look it up. But most people won't; I don't see any obvious way around that. And an article that skims over some of the details for the sake of brevity and approachability is a lot more likely to be read by those people, so that at least they know that something is happening and maybe some subset of the currently-oblivious can be inspired to learn more.

>Not every offense prosecuted under CFAA is a felony; in many cases defendants are charged with a misdemeanor instead.

I'm not sure how that changes anything. That some cases are prosecuted as misdemeanors or in an otherwise unproblematic fashion doesn't mean we can't do better in the cases that aren't. And if many of the cases prosecuted as misdemeanors could under the law have been prosecuted as felonies but for the grace of the prosecutor, that still points to a problem in the law.