If you think the NYT is unbiased, you might do well to read a few alternative sources for a while to compare and contrast. Once you've been to other lands, it's easier to spot the oddities of one's usual locale.
But more importantly, even if the NYT were entirely unbiased, that does not mean that it's good for your mental state to be reading it. Being exposed to a lot of problems that you cannot do anything about might not be a good thing.
Could you provide examples of NYT crisis-driven reporting? And alternatives please! People always recommend "alternatives", but don't really provide any :(
Try breitbart and thenation as alternatives, for example. Sure, some of it's drivel, but after a while you'll realize that some of the NYT is drivel as well.
And actually, if you just carefully compare NYT _headlines_ to their corresponding _articles_, you'll realize that the headlines really are pretty crappy. Certainly nowhere near the standards for headline writing we used to have in ninth grade journalism class.
I really hope to see a resurgence of classical quality journalism. But I'm not optimistic.
Breitbart doesn't seem like a source I'd use as they seem to lack journalistic integrity, they seems like raw data, a collection of things to look into - the usual selection to anger GOP voters, about how those damn Dem/libs are at it again.
Headlines are crappy everywhere, agreed.
But there is difference between bias and fake news.
That said, I think there's always place for a (or many) counter-culture sites, but I expect a more rigorous intellectual foundation from them not a lesser one to be taken as proper alternative sources. Kuhn's paradigm view is helpful here, MSM is not perfect, but a lot better than fringe/crackpot explanations of the world, and sure, there is probably a better one, but that's not the dominant one yet, but it'll be found by better and more data, better analysis, better methodologies, not by less, and not by more anger. (Sure, reading alt-news might feel right, you might get the feeling of OMG WHY I HAVEN'T BEEN TOLD OF THIS! DAMN I'LL HAVE TO USE THIS to keep myself free from MSM bias!! But to get less biased the solution is to explore the topics at hand from more primary sources (like watch a few youtube videos about the topic, watch a lecture by an accepted scientist/scholar), not by perusing even more biased sources).
Breitbart and The Nation both have a rather dramatic skew. But, since it's obvious and generally consistent, it's relatively easy to "null out". This leaves you with additional signals that are still relatively uncorrelated with (say) the NYT signal. This can provide additional information, and sometimes it leads by several days or even weeks, which is interesting.
(If I had a source of future stock price deltas that was almost always "wrong", I could be a very rich man.)
That said, I've personally come to the realization that my marginal hour spent reading daily news is generally better spent reading ancient philosophy. News is certainly addictive, but I'd be hard pressed to come up with examples where it's improved my life.
Overt opinion is pretty easy to spot. Subtle "editorials" in the form of omissions, slanted word choice, etc., are harder, esp until you start looking carefully for them.
But more importantly, even if the NYT were entirely unbiased, that does not mean that it's good for your mental state to be reading it. Being exposed to a lot of problems that you cannot do anything about might not be a good thing.