If anything, the New York Times is shifting to the Haaretz-type business model of selling chiefly to a political/worldview/educated-class base via subscriptions

If anything, the New York Times is shifting to the Haaretz-type business model of selling chiefly to a political/worldview/educated-class base via subscriptions, rather than distributing across a metro area with ad revenue. Economics of digital media are basically the same everywhere, especially when you actually face more competition from trying to act as a genuinely local, printed paper than in the digital space.