This isn't an "all or nothing" situation.

Enabling HTTPS is a benefit even if it's not perfect. The integrity and authentication it provides are alone a MASSIVE benefit (especially for a news site).

Now you'll know that your news is coming from their servers, and nobody else is tampering with it.

Then taking into account that it does provide confidentiality, you get rid of "dragnet" style data gathering and inspection.

You'd need to be targeted by someone who not only has a lot of time, but also is very up to date on the pages of NYT and their sizes to be able to track your article by its size.

No matter what, it's still harder than it was before to snoop on what you are doing.

It's a net gain in just about every single way.