Based on everything I know about the economics around this sort of stuff (which is a lot), this makes complete sense and is not at all surprising. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/29/technology/new-york-times-apple-news-app.html

To be clear, this isn’t a dig at Apple News insofar as it it is a critique of the whole Apple News/Google AMP/Facebook Instant Articles thing. As we said on Clubhouse last week with @JoshConstine, “own your audience”

And for the people that will argue, “I only read content if it exists in $X aggregator,” that’s exactly my point. You're the aggregator's audience, not the publication's.

Also, I’m not sure this has any impact on Apple News (especially since the Times wasn’t part of Apple News+), except to give other big publications the courage to dump it too. But the free Apple News will continue as it does.

As for Apple News+, I seriously doubt it has anything even close to a meaningful number of subscribers. Hell, I buy and subscribe to EVERYTHING, and I’m not a subscriber. It’s not a good product for a myriad of reasons. I’d rather pay more for individual subscriptions.