Doing it as an iOS app like this also prevents you from doing "Share to Pocket / Readability" like you would be able to with a website -- keeps you from scraping the content out of the publishers site.
And that word. I do not think it means what you think it means...
If all publications worked this way, Instapaper couldn't exist.
It is reminiscent of Microsoft's strategy tax. Making a product worse cause it may harm your other businesses.