will he run into that little NYT v. Sullivan thingy?
Perhaps - but " that little NYT v. Sullivan thingy” just might run into the fact that - per Antonin Scalia but in contradistinction to the Sullivan decision - the First Amendment - the entire BoR - left the right to sue for libel untouched. By design.The BoR was forced on the Federalists, who believed that the Ninth Amendment - "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people” - was implicit in the Constitution as written. And that since the rights of the people were in Common Law (and thus nowhere comprehensively enumerated), it was a fool’s errand to enumerate them all in a bill of rights.
The Federalists who passed the BoR had much bigger fish to fry than trying to modify the rights of the people; they were desperate to supplant the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution, and they needed to reassure the public that no rights were weakened by the Constitution. The upshot is that the First Amendment was crafted to preserve traditional freedom of the press and traditional limitations to the freedom of the press. The goal was to avoid controversy, and the Ninth Amendment and the wording of the First Amendment were tailored not to change the right to sue for libel.