Why? In their words:
The New York Times reports on stories all over the world, and our reporting is read by people around the world. Some readers choose to use Tor to access our journalism because they’re technically blocked from accessing our website; or because they worry about local network monitoring; or because they care about online privacy; or simply because that is the method that they prefer.
The benefit to you, o Western reader, is that you get to read the paper for free. No paywalls. Whether you respect the Times is irrelevant to this post. I’m only spreading awareness.
You will need Tor. Once you have it, their onion is found here:
https://www.nytimesn7cgmftshazwhfgzm37qxb44r64ytbb2dj3x62d2lljsciiyd.onion/
I used the .onion link using Onion Browser on iOS. The front page loaded fine, but articles were paywalled. This leads me to believe that it is not browsing through Tor that is allowing the paywall bypass, but rather something Tor Browser is doing.
One experiment might be to go to https://nytimes.com using Tor Browser and see if it also still bypasses the paywall. If my theory is correct, it just might…