The example case they give is more that the New York Times account can verify that a given, other, account actually is the account for one of their journalists.
To do that with domains, NYT would need to create a subdomain of theirs and let the journalist use it. At that point, might as well let the journalist use their own domain as well as have the NYT account verify the journalist's account.
They probably think the tree farming that the space age expansion introduces (finally a way to counter your pollution!) is "some gay shit".