Not really. The NYT was perfectly willing to protect the anonymity of a different psychiatrist blogger. Yes, this person did a better job of keeping their identity a secret, but the justification was largely the same.
And let's not pretend that journalism is only about sharing information. There's a great deal that journalists don't share (or even try to actively suppress) for many different reasons. Partly because there are a lot of ethical considerations when publicizing information.
Worth noting that part of the issue is that, with psychiatry and counseling in particular, it really doesn't matter what he was writing about or what his politics are. Any such publicity compromises the blank slate that counselors are supposed to present to their clients. While this does mean that mental health professionals have an obligation to take care with their public image, it's not unreasonable to ask others (including journalists) to respect the particular cost they face with any kind of exposure.
Is there a real argument for why the NYT _should_ publish Scott's name? Other than "it doesn't care whether that hurts the subject, and it expects to get more clicks this way".
It's not a requirement to offer this protection, but declining when it's asked for by the subject of a story is certainly a weighty ethical decision that respectable journalists don't take lightly.
Outing someone in a vulnerable position simply because the journalist disagrees with their ideas and wants to harm them (vs. deciding it's in the public interest) would be a very clear breach of ethics.
It doesn't matter if someone could just Google it. The NYT shouldn't make it easier unless there's journalistic value in doing so. Spite doesn't count.
Would you feel the same if this was a story about a sexual assault victim instead of a blogger?
He's a blogger, not an assault victim, but his concerns are similar. Avoiding harassment and physical violence against himself and his family. Avoiding negative consequences on his career.
Why are his concerns less valid than anyone else's? "Because I disagree with him" or "because he talks about ideas I don't think should have a platform" aren't good answers. There's no allegation he hurt anyone, did anything illegal, abused his influence, or acted in bad faith. So what's the journalistic purpose of exposing him?
Should his identity have been withheld because it would hurt his career, or he might be harassed?
It's not like he was trying to hide from the NSA or anything. The goal was "I don't want my patients to see my blog on the first page of Google results when they search for my real name". The NYT completely obliterated that.
Additionally, the fact that the NYT chose to smear him means that now many potential patients may google his name, see the hit piece and nothing else, and decide "yikes, better not go there".
The article wasn't flattering. It wasn't a smear or a hit piece.
Based on his behaviour in this and other[1] situations, I have no doubt that if Metz thought he could get away with something more unsavoury, he would have tried to.
[1] https://medium.com/@garyweiss_86200/cade-metz-pulls-a-deep-c...
This would be reminiscent of the South Park planet Marklar where all people, places and things are named Marklar. It's fun for a bit but likely impractical. It's also not clear how using someone's name is 'spiteful' given the vast majority of readers would have never heard of Scott Alexander, pseudonymous or otherwise.
These arguments about why we're all obligated to cooperate with Alexander's attempt to walk his identity back always seem to be inventing new norms, like the norm of "if a doctor slips up and writes political essays under their real name, then, for the sake of the doctor's career, every other person in the world should pretend that real name was never disclosed". It's a reasonable thing to want, but not to expect.