Flipboard can quickly become the distributing model of choice. Consider its already great UI, and connectivity with Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader and RSS.
Content creation is already outsourced, why not create an open marketplace for users to view aggregated content previews and pay per article, or per subscription?
I think there's a lot of potential here. I wrote about this last week:
Perhaps we need new intermediaries, like Flipboard and Instapaper, that can aggregate content from different sources and charge users, then pay the content creators for their work. This takes care of the central issues: one, it gives users access to a multitude of news sources in well-designed user experiences and two it creates paying users.
Large news organizations are understandably hesitant to give up their "relationship" with their readers, both because they lose control of the reader's personal information and because they are putting their survival in the hands of others, but I don't think they have much choice. If they would like to be paid directly for their content, rather than just through advertisements, they're going to need intermediaries like Flipboard and Instapaper. People want to read a variety of content sources, not a single one or a few, and intermediaries allow content from all kinds of sources to be combined, read and paid for together in a great reading experience.
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