QUESTION: How do stories end up in the New York Times?

ANSWER: They don't. Stories never end up in the New York Times, that's where they start.

If the New York Times collapsed, powerful interests would lose a valuable tool for manipulating the public memes. It would, however, also have other serious (unknowable) repercussions because society would lose a major pillar of the public trust. Trustworthiness notwithstanding, society might need these central culture hubs to self-orient and maintain a baseline for judgment or legitimation.

If it goes, it will be one of the last links to the great, universal levers of power from the gilded-age that dominate our recent history. This is undeniably the paper that has launched a thousand tumults across the globe. The grey lady whispers her dirty secrets and foreign governments fall. "This man's a communist." "That woman is corrupt." "Those tubes are nuclear." or "That cloud is mushroom."

She is the trophy wife of power. Trained to speak, only when spoken to.