New York Times is one of the top news portals on the web and getting linked from NYT is every webmasters dream. Analyzing my site traffic logs, it was surprising to see a steady stream of traffic from NYT links. New York Times had indeed linked to us and can link to you too.
Our site was linked on NYT from links provided via Blogrunner which is deeply integrated with NYT website. Blogrunner is an online news aggregator from NYT that collects headlines from news sources around the web including both established news organizations and blogs. Blogrunner brings you a view of the news ranked and organized by bloggers and other communities across the web. The ranking of news stories is determined by its popularity on the web using algorithms.
Sources are selected by an automated process based on their influence on the web. New York Times editors can add their own picks to this list and Blogrunner currently monitors about 12,000 blogs and media sources. So your blog is probably already indexed, but simply needs the right buzz on a current hot topic to get linked.
Though the placement of the Blogrunner widget varies across the NYT site, from above the fold, to the bottom of the page, it can generate decent traffic. Also learn how to display your blog on Reuters for free!