I've found that my interest in their content has waned as a function of design delivery decisions they've made - specifically in their RSS feeds and their igoogle widget. This has led me to a certain fascination with their ux experiments - some of them are very interesting but not immediately profitable (I.e. their use of data driven reporting in article specific interactive tools & their google stories experiments ) while others like their Netflix most watched lists seems like paid & placed content. This skimmer in particular seems like something they'd develop for a portable experience but I can't tell for what device.

All that is a roundabout way of saying in my mind there are two parts to the new business of news - what gets produced and how it's delivered. Services like daylife have taken a stab at the delivery equation & places like the guardian have applied interesting approaches to developing editorial with tech - but the economist in print is still the best subway read for me right now and the only one I subscribe to. I expect that to change.