Not true for newspapers and never has been. Even in the days when print was predominant stories would get edited between printings as new material came to light.

As earlier commenters have noted the original story was pushed out quickly, and later refined. This is totally normal in all newsrooms, and if you diff boring, non-controversial stories, you'll see the same thing--though perhaps to a lesser degree due to the fact that there's less of a rush to get out, say, a travel piece, compared to one with national import.

Full disclosure: I worked at the NYTimes for two years as a developer in the newsroom. NYT editors and reporters are, almost universally, smart, careful, well-intentioned people.