I don't discount that it's possible that NYT headline policy could have changed in the last decade, but sensationalism when it comes to newspaper headlines is the historical norm. "Clickbait" is an ancient phenomenon:
"In A History of News, Mitchell Stephens notes sensationalism can be found in the Ancient Roman gazette Acta Diurna, where official notices and announcements were presented daily on public message boards, the perceived content of which spread with enthusiasm in illiterate societies."
Sure, if it bleeds it leads. But I've been a news consumer since the 1980s and a reader of the NYT almost as long as it's had a web site. It is my strong impression that its headlines have gotten noticeably worse. The main one that annoys me, and I don't actually see an example of it on the main page right now, is the teaser headline that forces you to click through to know what the article is even about[^1].
Edit: here's an example. Headline on the front page is "A Chaotic, Confusing Campaign: Here’s Who Should Be the Next Governor of California". Makes it sound like you're clicking through to an endorsement, right? Nope, the article is actually a voter guide. It's a completely misleading headline.
[^1]: You can often inspect the URL to see the original descriptive headline before the clickbaiters got to it which makes it even more annoying.
Blame the economics of the Internet. Companies use clickbait because it works, there have been many examples of this, and if a company wants to stay revenue generating in this day and age it must use clickbait.
Quite funny to think that we might have AI models meticulously nudging newspaper editors in order to carefully control the public's Overton Window about AI, playing some 5d chess.
"In A History of News, Mitchell Stephens notes sensationalism can be found in the Ancient Roman gazette Acta Diurna, where official notices and announcements were presented daily on public message boards, the perceived content of which spread with enthusiasm in illiterate societies."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensationalism