I disagree that the NYT or other major traditional newspapers give out "ideological pablum"
I don't deny that a hard self-examination is necessary, and I would agree that _some_ subscription loss may be for ideological reasons. But I think there's a much broader problem of papers not selling that needs to be properly researched.
When I was a kid almost every household got the daily paper. Some households got two. That is no longer true; many homes today don't get any daily paper at all. Why is that? That must be ascertained.
I don't know all the reasons, but I would submit some reasons are:
1) People drive to work instead of transit and they aren't reading the paper on the train/bus as they used to. 2) Both parents work these days (assuming there even is two parents) and there is little time left over to relax and read the paper at night. Mother isn't home during the day to pause and read it and in the evening Father has his chores to do and can't read it. 3) Far more people live in the suburbs and just don't care about the big city issues anymore, the stuff that was the bread 'n butter of a city newspaper. Suburbanites without any city connection -- as many are today -- don't care about City Hall or inner city issues. Unfortunately, it's a lot harder for a newspaper to cover every tiny town meeting of the suburbs, where many towns can be just a few square miles. 4) The cost of covering a much larger developed area and distributing the newspaper to said area is considerably more. 5) If you compare a newspaper today to one say of 1974, you'll find the 1974 edition much smaller. Over the years they've added many features to the newspaper that weren't there in the past. This is a cost. 6) TV always was the enemy of print. With cable, there's so much more on TV now (though mostly garbage*) and people watch instead of read. *Cable TV now seems to be recycled sitcoms loaded down with frequent commercials.