What problem are you trying to fix? If I'm offline, what good is being able to see my article list if I can't read the articles? If I'm online, why do I feel any less irritated when I try to go back to an article I was just reading only to find that I need to wait for it to download again?
The problem fixed is that the user has an indication as to what happened to all of their saved articles. That's a very big difference. It's not a full solution, as the parent noted, but the UX is far superior.
