There are some strong points in this article but I think it reaches the wrong conclusion. Flipboard and Instant Articles are not an alternative business model. They are a loss-leader, plain and simple. The goal is still to get you on their webpage where you'll see the ads.

Good ole capitalism solves this problem quite easily. CNN banks on its brand to keep people coming to their site but there are plenty of non-terrible news sites on the web so for those who care about a nice user experience can just use those instead.