Why do you say that? It seems fairly certain that if NYTimes one day looked like a blog, then their revenue would dry up. It would scare away a lot of people, such as my dad, who don't like change and who don't care about whether a website has rounded corners.
On the other hand, Facebook has forced some fairly annoying changes with their chat interface, news feed and friend/group management. Maybe people won't be scared away that easily (put off is another story).
I don't really remember but when it appeared there was an option button/link and I followed it and one option is to switch off the sidebar. Never use messaging really.
Looking just now I have the old style tab, if I click it the sidebar pops open, there's a "cog" for settings in the bottom right corner. IIRC you have to set yourself as "unavailable" to all and then use the cog to select "hide sidebar". Try that.
Hm, I think we had a slight disconnect in our topic!
In the last week or two, Facebook changed their messaging UI so that you cannot get a list of all your buddies that are online to chat (it guesses who you would care to see) among other mostly cosmetic changes. AFAIK there is no way to use the chat UI that was available a month ago now (or see if a particular person is online unless you specifically type in their name).
I am completely unqualified to say anything about both the NYTimes and website design for news. I simply am stating that many decisions made at billion dollar companies do not have as much thought put into them as you might expect.
