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yea, wouldn't spend too much time recoding that then. i would still block the print pages via robots.txt so that they aren't crawled at all.

You pretty much nailed it. If the only reason is cosmetic (which I doubt has any influence on anything), there is absolutely no reason to risk losing top 5 rankings. Good luck!

Side note.. Google's official stance is that 301s pass 100% authority but not worth testing. You are guaranteed to see a dip in rankings/organic traffic after you set up the 301s.

logo should be within "publisher", not "article".

Overall, I'd recommend using a schema generator tool to assist like: http://tools.seochat.com/tools/schema-article-generator/#sthash.iWTjQpvO.dpbs

ehh. unless reposting to the other website naturally creates more backlinks (e.g. each site has its own separate audience that would increase the total number of backlinks) keeping the articles on separate sites and interlinking with keyword anchor text is probably the better strategy.

content syndication works best when republishing to a new audience, on domains you don't already own.