Two-step loading could be one viable approach. However, as with any optimizations, I would prefer to conduct an investigation (or see data from a previous one) about what page loading stages are taking the longest. This can be a combination of loading a few sample articles with the Safari inspector & Instruments attached (as well as loading the page in chrome w/ the chrome dev tools). I'm guessing there would be some high-yield opportunities to collaborate with mobile-web to optimize page load times before (or even in parallel to) any optimizations on the native end.
Of course, any page loading optimizations we make need to keep offline use in mind—at least for native apps.