If its not for brand building and product specific purposes there is absolutely no reason to put so much weight and value on blogging. Its dying, most bloggers can't make a penny anywhere else, probably for a reason. Why produce a home with some helicopter-money supply for them here? Few people are reading all that lukewarm dribble, its not very entertaining, when there is no actual mix of news, gossip, culture, stories. There is no panorama available yet on this platform. That makes it more and more boring to the bone. The voting system does the rest to curb it to mediocre non-news and regurgitated bullshit.
I'd suggest to reward aggregation in some way. Any shared/re-published story from any other network should be rewarded, if its the first occurrence on Steem. That way a lot of content would be brought in, which people are familiar with. Getting the latest on steemit.com - instead of their former network of choice.
Instead you successfully pissed of everybody who tried to keep it a bit up to date to the real world out there, outside of the crypto landscape.