I don't get the impression that the NY Times is all that guilty of dark patterns, but I also read it like I do most sites; with javascript disabled, so I could be missing something. But really it seems like one of the better journalistic institutions remaining after decades of generally lowered standards and capabilities for the US writ large. I think Ezra Klein is one of the most thoughtful writers/interviewers in the world today, for instance, so I follow his work there.