I haven't followed this but I will take anyone's word for it that Coffee did break the story and cause the NYT to take notice, and that was great work.
I think the objection is to the image of major media outlets living in fear of the Paul brothers. They regularly publish negative stories on people with much better lawyers, more influence, and scarier extralegal muscle.
Perhaps the risk/benefit ratio explains it better. The NYTimes could break a story that could undermine future access to an influential group of elites and that could be not factual and invite pesky questions, in exchange for a potentially, considerable boost in reputation. Or they could play it safe, wait for someone else to take the plunge, and then follow after, with a negligible increase in their reputation.
When an organization has already taken on considerable risk on multiple fronts, they become much more conservative. I'd wager it's not fear of the Paul Brothers, it's a limited appetite for risk. Also, mitigating risk since it takes time to investigate a signal and turn it into a story; which the NYTimes seemed content to offload onto Coffee.
I doubt that. I worked at the NYT for 8 years (not on editorial side) and that’s not how they think. Also I think the legal department would very much disagree with you.
I also worked at The New Yorker. They have their own legal counsel and are not risk adverse in the least.
Maybe they once did, but no longer. If they did, they’d cover the laptop story or the sketchiness with Burisma. Those are conveniently ignored for articles about diversity in knitting communities [0]. Journalism is dead outside of a few remaining gumshoes.
I think the objection is to the image of major media outlets living in fear of the Paul brothers. They regularly publish negative stories on people with much better lawyers, more influence, and scarier extralegal muscle.