I just hit CTRL-U to read the pages source which contains the text content. Now that I think about it I wonder if reader mode would work. Hey, maybe you can just set your user agent to Google Bot.
Reader Mode is invaluable for sites that use Javascript to throw up paywalls when you're in the middle of reading something (Wired does this, last I checked). Sometimes you have to refresh the page for it to fully work, but once you do, the full text is right there, in a format that's much nicer than the original could ever strive to be.