This is more a consequence of PR being cheap (nicely packaged chunks of the article at no cost) and journalism expensive. If the NYTimes stopped playing by var

This is more a consequence of PR being cheap (nicely packaged chunks of the article at no cost) and journalism expensive. If the NYTimes stopped playing by various players' be-nice rules, they would still have access (they have enough relevance that blacklisting them would hurt), but it would be more expensive to produce.