That seems a little too optimistic. Nowadays, they cancel their subscriptions when they get to read some fact they don't like. For example, back in the run-up to the 2016 election there was an utterly nutso, completely nonsensical conspiracy theory about Trump using DNS as a secret communications channel with a Russian bank and, for some reason, a US medical clinic which the Clinton campaign demanded the FBI investigate. After that demand went viral on social media, the NYT pushed back in the gentlest way possible by saying the FBI had looked at these claims and concluded all the evidence was likely the result of normal mass marketing emails for Trump hotels. (This is also what most experts concluded regardless of political affiliation. Other problems included the fact it would've made a really awful communication channel and wasn't even remotely under Trump's control.) Some time later, there was such a pushback against this including a campaign of cancelled subscriptions, that the Times basically ended up apologising and saying they wouldn't do it again.
To this day, the only part of this that has been called a conspiracy theory by any mainstream publication is the idea that the whole thing could be an entirely technically unremarkable result of ordinary mass marketing emails for Trump hotels.
Is this the case? The NYT seemed much more reasonable on the Russia stuff than say, most cable news.
> the Times basically ended up apologising and saying they wouldn't do it again.
This did not happen. I'm assuming you're referring to this passage from an article two years later:
> The key fact of the article — that the F.B.I. had opened a broad investigation into possible links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign — was published in the 10th paragraph.
> A year and a half later, no public evidence has surfaced connecting Mr. Trump’s advisers to the hacking or linking Mr. Trump himself to the Russian government’s disruptive efforts. But the article’s tone and headline — “Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia” — gave an air of finality to an investigation that was just beginning.
> Democrats say that article pre-emptively exonerated Mr. Trump, dousing chances to raise questions about the campaign’s Russian ties before Election Day.
> Just as the F.B.I. has been criticized for its handling of the Trump investigation, so too has The Times.
This is not "apologising and saying they wouldn't do it again."
I agree that the term "conspiracy theory" is not used in a balanced way. Mainstream democrat theories that turn out to be without merit just stop being reported on (such as the Steele Dossier), whereas theories from either left or right fringe generally are called conspiracy theories.
Nowadays, they mostly cancel their subscriptions when they get to read some opinion they don't like.