What's even more ironic is The New York Times wants your email address, in part, because they want to use it for advertising practices exposed in this article.

In the advertising world, "leverage first-party data" (i.e., use people's email addresses and other contact info) is a phrase that has been repeated to the point of cliche when talking about how to adapt to the end of the third-party cookie. NYT and all these other sites work with ad exchanges that rely on their signed-in user base to target audiences.

Working in advertising, I don't think it's ever really used for anything nefarious, but I understand why people think it's shady.