*sigh*
No matter how good the blogpost or article itself might *actually* be, if I spot, or suspect, that it has a slop header image, I probably won't read it.
Sure, perhaps I am missing out, but that is a boundary for me.
I appreciate that not everyone has the time, skill, or spoons to create or search for a CC-licensed image. My approach is just not to use a header image, which is a simple and free approach.
For the last 25 years, I've relied on RSS for a lot of blogs that I read regularly.
If some of those have adopted slop images, I won't necessarily know, as I don't see their images.
And, if your blog does not have (full text, please) RSS, please do consider adding it! It is the future.
And the past.
@adingbatponder It sounds like you might benefit from using a feed aggregator, like @freshrss.
That downloads your chosen feeds, and you subscribe to it, which keeps things in sync.
Neil Brown
adingbatponder 
👾
Oliv'