NYT was a great newspaper when editor Carr Van Anda mobilized his entire news staff to provide most timely coverage of the Titanic disaster.
But the NYT was only one of the dailies covering New York at the time and by no means the largest.
I agree that the NYT has been haunted by Walter Duranty selling out to Stalin and getting a Pulitizer for his lies.
It was tolerable back when Abe Rosenthal was editor but since then it’s been a race to the bottom.
It was a completely different world when the Titanic sank. WWI led to widespread change, disillusionment, and repudiation of nearly all tenets of western civilization. The world has not recovered from that.