Is Village Voice Media 'gaming' Digg?

Sure, we all pimp our own blog material on social media sites like Digg and Reddit, but is Village Voice Media going over the top? Its papers -- including City Pages, SF Weekly and the Village Voice -- have a network of paid workers who systematically post and vote up content that's almost exclusively their own. It's legal, although possibly a violation of Digg's terms of use, but how does a pile of web hits from across the globe serve smaller advertisers who are paying top dollar to reach potential local customers? My latest on the topic at MnIndy.