I couldn't agree with EGOL more. The best option is to place equivalent or higher quality content, discussing the same topic as the previous article on the URL.
However, I think there are some ways to buy yourself some times if you don't have all of the content that you need. This is how I might personally approach it:
- Create "subject buckets" and divide the content into as many buckets as possible. If it's a well structured blog, then Categories and Tags are going to be extremely helpful for this.
- Find the most powerful URL in each bucket and create an extremely high quality (likely lengthy) article on that URL in which you cover as many topics in that bucket as possible. (Also, pay attention to links that are generating a lot...or any...traffic. The URLs that aren't generating traffic have a much lower likelihood of being changed discovered and removed by a webmaster.)
- 301 the other URLS in that bucket to the high quality post until you can get the rest of the content written. In some cases, (and depending on how varied the topics are) this might be more of a permanent solution that will a.) consolidate your link juice and b.) reduce your total page count (good post-panda).
Also keep in mind that rewriting content is going to be much easier (or cheaper in most cases) than having completely original content written. That being said, make sure the writers know they need to make the article "your own". I'd suggest a service called Vappingo. They don't publish their "re-write" rates on the site, but if you contact them they'll definitely help you out. I had them rewrite some sub-par content I purchased and was extremely impressed by the quality...and I'm picky about content quality.)
