People in the thread are really gravitating towards using this as a damning piece of evidence for the entire system, and regardless of that might be a fair thing to do, I think this demonstrates opportunity. So the NYT does not have a blanket policy of unmasking everyone, but it does make better stories when sources are named. A reporter with more scruples is going to act differently in this situation and it's all about pushiness & how you present this (do you work with the source? do you push them and pretend like there's no option? do you realize you can wrap your article in EVEN MORE MYSTIQUE by having an anonymous person angle?). Having an independent record of how individual actors in a distributed system act would be incredibly helpful as an interviewee to have before meeting to know what they're getting into. And it'd also help readers to understand more about the kind of person who's writing their news and how that might bias their angle.