I don't know, the tone of the article wasn't actually super favorable towards WeWork. The author outright mocked their founder pretty consistently throughout the piece. The vibe I got was more, "WeWorks are nice to work at but they are not as revolutionary as they think they are".

For a PR company, a few negative comments about the business model is a price-of-admission to the New York Times and a pre-requisite for getting it past an editor.

Largely, it's one the PR company / WeWork are happy to pay because they get to say they've been in the NYT, they get exposed to new potential new customers without having to pay per lead, and 'WeWorking' becomes a step closer to being a verb with WeWork's brand attached to it.

It's deeper, its for people who need it.

Disguising PR as articles is really dishonest.

Native advertising... After Craig Newmark effectively killed newspapers’s No. 1 source of revenue, they had to turn to other means of generating ad sales.

I had thought the NYTimes was above that internet troll behavior. Clearly I was mistaken.

Well, that's one less place I'll be spending my money online.