On NYT in particular, load the page, when the text loads hit escape and the subscription nag simply doesn't load. It's not particularly ethical, but on the other hand maybe NYT should get serious about the software that's meant to protect its business model.

"If they don't want me to steal, they should have better locks." Would not be a good defense to allow theft.

That is not to say piracy is theft. Only that 'they should protect themselves better' is not a justification.

They aren't withholding the content on page load or requiring authentication, because they need search engines to be able to read it freely to get SEO benefits. They are tricking the search engines and to think they are giving content away to everyone for free unconditionally. They gave you the article for free, then added a bunch of CSS to make it difficult to consume. Modifying the content they already gave you for free is not stealing.

I guess people just read the headline. AFAIK Incognito tricks don't work anymore so I also can't read these articles at all.

Anecdotally, on both mobile and desktop I’m able to hit the X button on Chrome after the content loads but before the paywall shows and read the entire article.

Consider purchasing a wsj, nytimes, and Washington post subscription; It may help you get value out of the news aggregator.

https://github.com/iamadamdev may help

I use uBlock Origin, I don't know if it helps block the subscription popup but I can read it properly in Firefox.

If you by chance have a mac or an iPhone, you can use Safari's reader mode read all the text comfortably after the page loads. Most of these sites load the text and then load some js to hide it from you. I've found reader mode works reasonably well on NYT and Bloomberg.

Try archive.is