Having signed up for the New York Times recently, they're surprisingly hostile towards new customers:

- Autoplaying videos on the front page with no pause button. I expect video from CNN, but not a newspaper. That's not what I'm there for.

- They send you many "introductory" emails with no way to unsubscribe.

I mostly gave up on the front page, but it's marginally useful for reading the occasional article linked to from elsewhere.