I believe you are making an error on one of your base premises. You aren't supposed to be rewarded proportionally to the work you've done. That would be the Labor Theory of Value.. which is invalid ^^
In bitcoin your mining hardware will work hard allll the time. That doesn't mean you'll be the one to find the nonce and get the block reward.
To mitigate this risk, people have formed mining pools. I don't see why bloggers couldn't just band together and share the blogging rewards among themselves.
A publication like Liberty.me could jump on steem and pool all the blogging rewards into one wallet and then divide up the pot equally between writters.
Writing pools would be equal to mining pools. Distribute the risk/reward between multiple humans/mining rigs.
Here's something I just wrote that addresses some of your points.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@cob/on-fairness-rewards-whales-and-a-bright-bright-future
Hope you enjoy the short read and it keeps you on the platform sir! You have good stuff. Don't give up when Steem(it) is just in it's infancy! More will join, you will gain followers, followers will support you as long as they enjoy what you pump out.
I think pools are a great idea, it'd be similar to how Medium has their publications.