In response to your first point - the editors at Vice choose the title not me so it's out of my hands! I take your point though, Reddit may not be a completely accurate comparison, though it does help to convey the idea for someone who is unfamiliar with Steemit.
At present, for the reasons I outlined in the article, I would not consider writing original content for Steemit - the rewards are too unpredictable to invest the amount of time that I put into research. The question of whether it would interfere is separate to that, but it does not create a conflict to publish work on different platforms - in fact that's the nature of being freelance.
RE: My investigation into Steemit for VICE Motherboard.