I am afraid this piece is missing the most massive reason that articles are still published in journals - Impact Factor. Academics live and die not just by the number of articles that they get published, but, crucially, where they get published. The entire academic system of progression is basically controlled by the journals. The reason that the splashy websites never succeed is that they have targeted the wrong problem. If you want to fix the system then you have to come up with a new way of rating academic's publications, which would then be fed back into the career progression system in their individual institutions. Good luck with that.