Claiming Weiss left because she was bullied out of the organization papers over leaves out the fact that there was obviously a significant pull factor to get her to jump ship, as you point out, leaving led her to make significantly more money.

But yes, there’s clearly a resentment from within elite media (WaPo/NYTimes) that people they don’t like have an avenue for editorial independence that is beyond their reach.

Is that really so though? No idea about Weiss, but journalists like Greenwald and Taibbi made the name for themselves. And even if people "become famous" while working for NYT, how much of it is really attributable to the person versus the newspaper? Major newspapers are full of people who might have name recognition but (as Greenwald often points out) never do any real journalism; and so would probably have nothing to offer as independents. Not even speaking of complete no-names.

Please link the article in question, instead of a search results page.