When your audience is affluent and powerful, you don't need as many to have an oversized impact. It's not like NYT has a small readership. They are massive and their influence is far greater than that of The Enquirer.
Tabloids and fake news rags on the other hand have been reaching far into the middle class, the non-voters and so forth, in other words they're generating an audience among people who we would have considered to be immune to demagoguery.