The policy doesn't even seem to be very consistently applied. There are a couple excerpts from articles floating around that happily use pseudonyms for, eg, one of the Chapo podcast hosts.
Wow, this is egregious. I already didn't have any respect for the NYT, but I'm surprised that a writer of theirs would lie so flagrantly about being chained by bureaucracy.
https://twitter.com/hradzka/status/1275460707069210624