Beyond that, what they don't realize is that other news sites will simply report on what is reported in the NYT, and those sites will forever be free. From time to time I will copypaste a NYT url to a single-use non-private FF instance to read (and then immediately clear history) whereby I invariably find that the article only has a few bits that expanded my knowledge. Most of the articles are those few bits of new info followed by summaries of days or months old information that I am already fully aware of. And the same goes for the WaPo.
I understand that we need to support good journalism and I will when I find some really good journalism, without auto-play vids and ridiculous amounts of ad content and making sure the readership on "both sides" is fairly represented. The WaPo has potential but Bezos' quest for all the dollars is ruining it.
What they don't get is that they can't control the information and that information has no intrinsic price, for our primary advantage as human beings is our ability to spread ideas and information from person to person. Their information is going to get aggregated and there's not a damn thing they can do about it, and I'm willing to wait 12 hours for it to get to me secondhand.
The MBAs are digging their own graves every single day and they don't have anyone to blame but themselves. That they have gone all in on the advertisers is only hastening their demise.