The journalists created the content for the NYT, the users created it for Facebook. Both received something in return for their effort, and the content ended up being owned by NYT/facebook
The journalists were paid to assign ownership of their work to the NYT corporation, with a clear and well understood contract of work that they signed, either in real ink or with an equivalent electronic signature, as consenting adults.
Can you say the same for user created content on Reddit, Twitter, or Facebook? A user agreement that nobody reads doesn't have anything like the same legal basis as a signed contract. Not to mention that a large percentage of users are not adults.
