It's just acutely sad that the paper of record is no better off than the rest....
Speaking as someone at a newspaper, I can tell you that the NYT is better off than many of the rest.
In short, they've been making moves towards becoming an Internet company for longer than others, as evidenced by their 100+ person development team, use of Ruby on Rails for major projects, and overall technical talent. That is a unique position among newspapers.
The problem is likely twofold:
1) Print is expensive. 2) Internet ads don't pay like print ads used to pay.
Okay, threefold:
3) Craigslist has killed the classifieds market dead.
Newspapers around the world are suffering from these things. It's just acutely sad that the paper of record is no better off than the rest....