When Newsstand was introduced, there weren’t many quality magazines that had Newsstand versions of their apps. That is to be expected and nowadays, all of the magazines I want to read are available in Newsstand. Those magazines are also available outside Newsstand though and that may be the case for the magazines you read as well. If you’re interested, you can look for the titles in the Newsstand Store.

If I needed to get to the Newstand app, I would have to scroll a couple screens from the front to finally find it.

Wouldn’t that be because you moved it there? Newsstand is on the first page of my Springboard and it has always been there. iOS 7 didn’t change that.