The Highways magazine change-over is quite like the arrangement that the Academy of Model Aeronautics had with American Airplane Modeler magazine in the 70's. AAM was a for-profit magazine that included an insert done by the AMA as their newsletter. I was just a high-schooler at the time so I didn't think about fussy business or politic details, but the arrangement seemed to work well enough to allow the AMA to distribute a dozen pages of organization news without having to directly shoulder distribution costs.
This change should be a good way for the GSC to focus on organizational priorities while controlling costs.