"Above the fold" is something that we worried about 10 years ago when we were concerned that users didn't know how to scroll. There's lots of evidence to indica

"Above the fold" is something that we worried about 10 years ago when we were concerned that users didn't know how to scroll. There's lots of evidence to indicate that people really don't mind scrolling that much. You can only make the article text so wide before it becomes hard to read. It is already twice as wide (at least) as the printed version. If you have one article per page then you are going to have a lot of leftover space when somebody has their web browser at an insane width of >1400px at 144dpi. They might as well fill that space with advertising. He is kind of stacking the deck to support his point. He has his font size pretty small--probably too small for most NYTimes readers to comfortably read. If you crank up the font size to something readable then the proportion of the page "above the fold" dedicated to the article is much larger.