My browser window is typically sized to a width of around 1200 pixels -- pretty typical I would think -- so the printer-formatted version results in lines of around 30 words. That's too long to be able to read comfortably, and I think it's unreasonable to expect me to resize my browser depending on the type of website I'm reading (I have it as wide as 1200 pixels for a reason).
The standard, screen-formatted version (http://nymag.com/news/business/55687/) is specifically designed at a fixed width for comfortable reading.
I agree in principle that there are a lot of distractions on the screen-formatted article, but linking to the printer-formatted version does not seem like the right approach. Perhaps the best current solution is that readability Greasemonkey script that appeared a few weeks ago.