Gregory's Server@liaizon In many languages (Czech is the one with which I'm familiar), removing diacritics *changes the letter*. An 's' with a hacek over it is a different letter than an s without. Just as ñ and n are different letters in Spanish.
To reframe your analogy, the NYT isn't removing vowels, but it's randomly replacing vowels with different vowels.
@ObbieZ It was simply an analogy that I thought to write. But yes you are right that its closer to changing vowels then emitting them. Tho I guess this also depends on the context of what language they are doing this to.