That format may be printer-friendly, but it is significantly less readable on-screen. The text fills the browser window, making each line far too long to read comfortably.

Bloated pages (both visually and in terms of file size) are a problem, but linking directly to printer-friendly pages is not a suitable fix, IMHO.

Avoiding advertising also bothers me (even more than the actual advertisements bother me) in general, because I like information, and information generally costs money to acquire - especially high-quality, reliable information. Newspapers and their investigative journalism appear to be going away, and that makes me sad.

Note: I'm not familiar with Inc. magazine, so discussing quality journalism may or may not be entirely relevant in this context.