Accessing the Great Idea - Why this isn't working

I simply don't understand why trade magazines bury good content on-line. What on earth are they afraid of? I presume that the client of advertorial content would be delighted if the articles were reprinted, referred to, or otherwise distributed. The problem is that the on-line "readers" that these publications use are so archaic that navigation, even on a large screen, is clumsy at best. You can't clip interesting bits to share with colleagues. - yet that's exactly what an advertorial client is trying to achieve. Have you ever seen a book with navigation instructions? Of course not. So why would you even think of launching a reader that apparently needs them. This represents the last dying gasps of the print medium, especially in niche titles. It's unfindable and unsharable. So it will go.