Imagine the web came before the newspaper, and you were an investor. Then someone came to you and pitched you : I'll take the best stuff on the web, print it daily on paper in factories, transport it all over the country in the night, then sell it for the price of a cup of coffee. I'll also hire a bunch of expensive writers to write quality content, and I'll also make that content available for free on the website so as to make people want to buy the paper.
If you watched the video then you'd know that the designer did a great job of integrating the content into the design of the newspaper. It isn't a copy-paste job. There was design and layout and graphics that you just can't do on the web, and he demonstrated that people like it.
So if you change the question to, would you invest in a designer who had a track record of boosting circulation by 20-100% in two years time?
Would you invest?