[natrius]

"Your evidence that reddit is replaceable is you've used similar sites (most of which are basically dead in the water at this point)."

That's the point. Internet communities come and go all the time. None of them have proven to be hard to replace. Quality news organizations don't pop up every few years.

The New York Times has competitors, but not equals. All of the papers you mentioned (except for the WSJ, which is indispensable in its niche) have a small fraction of the subscribers the New York Times does, which seems like a pretty good metric for unique value.