I currently have a paid subscription to both NYTimes and WaPo. I barely use either. Going to a newspaper website and clicking on headlines that sound interesting is simply not an experience that i'm interested in. I'd much rather read articles that have been filtered through some sort of social aggregator, whether that's facebook, twitter, reddit, or HN. And given how news spreads on those sites, i'm probably not alone here.

But as long as "fake news" is all free, and "serious journalism" is hidden behind a paywall it's hard for it to compete with the viral effect of free stories on any aggregators. If the NYTimes wants people to read their content, they need to make it discoverable, not lock it away.