Also, there's no real reason to shell out to curl. I use LWP::UserAgent, though for low barrier to entry you may prefer LWP::Simple.

With regard to your output, lexical file handles and two argument open would be better practice (there is nnothing wrong with what you are doing per se). So you might replace

    open PATH, "> /home/me/RT/$counter.txt" or die $!;
    print "\n\tFetching\n$_\n";
    print PATH "$article";
    close PATH;
[download]

    open my $path, '>', "/home/me/RT/$counter.txt" or die $!;
    print "\n\tFetching\n$_\n";
    print $path $article;
[download]

The file will automatically close when you go out of scope, it will handle some potential escaping issues that two-argument cannot, and there is no need to quote the article content before printing it.

Lastly, if you are scraping, you may be violating terms of service, so please check on that for the site you are accessing. At the least, you should put a sleep in there to be polite.