> and quite another to dismiss the entire publication for being less-than-perfect

The newspaper's ombudsman declined to punish the reporter in any way, or admit anything other than "oops, mistakes were made". That's what makes it a failure of the newspaper and not just "less-than-perfect" reporting. It's one example from a pattern of behavior, and the reason people are saying the NYT no longer have industry-leading editorial standards.

Let me remind you that the reporter was caught red-handed driving a car in circles in a parking lot so that he could have a more salacious story about "running out of gas". The original article stated that he coasted off the freeway into the parking lot with no energy remaining. There's no two ways about it: That's a lie.

How low do you need the p-value to be before you reject the null hypothesis? 0.0005? 5e-9?

Nobody is disputing that news is a hard business, but you can't have it both ways: If you're going to run a serious newspaper, then you need to run a serious newspaper. That means upholding editorial standards. Most importantly, that mean having real repercussions for reporters who break the trust of your readership.

> "ZOMG ALIENS!" is complete nonsense, but ... it probably also drives traffic, and thus revenue.

The owners are completely within their rights to pivot and turn the NYT into the next buzzfeed. But you're just reinforcing the point that it is no longer a serious newspaper.