Just to explain i come from online news background.
I agree with the exposure of a small amount of copy – i Love it when we get good position on Google news for instance, however that is different to contributing to ‘no one visiting websites’ google news sends people to our site and improves our stats allowing us to charge more for advertising – meaning i get paid, which means the news gets written and people get informed about stuff they want to know – this would not be the case if people read all my stuff through a syndicating app (unless the app pay me for my stuff, which they wouldn’t need to do if they can just grab MRD from my site).

I have no other product to sell on the back of increased exposure.

but maybe you aren’t talking to news guys with this idea?