Good thoughts. A few things:

1.) This would require a big media company like the HuffPo to purchase a lot of Steem Power. I don't think any big media publishers are willing to hold a legally ambiguous digital asset on their books anytime soon, though maybe a startup trying to disrupt would.
2.) A publisher that did this would still be subject to the whims of other whales (right now Hive account@steemit owns $66M, Hive account@ned owns $3.5M and Hive account@dan owns $2.7M worth of steem power). A large, premium publisher would probably rather fork their own blockchain than use a blockchain that gives up so much power to others (at least for now).