Having worked in donor dependent nonprofit, this kind of stuff just unfortunately works way too well. You'd be surprised what generates the most revenue. Despite having a large digital audience, we had the highest conversion rate on paper mailers. All the popups and email begs just worked way more often than they pissed anybody off. The economics demand it.

And it stands to reason NYT do this so aggressively since they also have by far the most successful subscription business in the entire world of journalism.