The thoughts he is critical of here are not those related to the design - it's all of the newspaper/media/NYT-bashing that takes up the first half of the essay. The designer makes a lot of claims about why things are the way they are for newspaper websites in 2011 without really backing them up, and seems to be assuming the worst about everyone involved.

The redesign on it's own is fine but the screed before that is the issue.