Not even suggesting malice there, just my imagination :)
[Ed. add:]
It's also that I don't even think Metz was necessarily aware the name would be such a big deal. It's very much normal practice to name people, and even if they saw that Scott was privacy conscious it might not have registered properly and just seemed like a "little bit of extra zest." However, IMHO they just should have backed off after it became apparent to them.
edit: Compare digital advertising to digital subscriptions, not overall subscriptions
Note that newspapers make little if any profit from print subscriptions in themselves, because they're little better than breakeven with the cost of printing and delivery. The real profit has always come from the advertising. Digital subscriptions are something new in that they're actually making money from subscription revenues instead of just using them to cover unit costs, but they're currently still tiny.
A more effective paywall drives subscriptions. Once you have a paywall, subscriptions are as much about clicks as ads.
I don't have a subscription myself, but I have considered paying for one because acquaintances with a low bar for quality occasionally want to share and discuss something behind the paywall and I can't rely on all of them to know how to print a pdf and share that with me.
As subscribers witness the quality decline, they'll cancel their subscriptions.
The NY Times today is not the NY Times of A.M. Rosenthal.