No, the other way is to sell articles individually. Why are you being obtuse?

Why is purchasing by subscription bad, but selling articles individually good? There are benefits to both. Personally, I'd rather pay a subscription because I read a lot of articles and buying them individually would be a pain in the ass.

Newspapers have been subsidized by advertising for over 100 years, why are we trying to make money from subscriptions now?

Because advertising wasn't covering NYT's costs, and easily allows people to scrape and replicate your content elseware without ads.

If NYT was able to stay profitable with ads on their site, they wouldn't have thrown up the paywall to begin with.