The New York Times is professional journalism. You don't need to be rich to afford $3.75/week. This is about $200/yr, on the order of the price of a print subscription. Working class families have been reading newspapers for decades.

Occasionally we find that professional, full-time newsrooms produce better content than the blogosphere. Producing that content took a staff of educated, full-time professionals with families and mortgages. I don't find it particularly offensive that people who regularly consume their output are expected to help fund their salaries so they can keep producing.