My guessing is, there are many and different forces that are the cause and foundation for crap (factories). E.g. the realtime web (aka Twitter) together with its quick-and-easy distribution methods, makes it hard for traditional publication methods to catch up in novelty, speed.
Imho, novelty rules today; people in their procastination strive for content that is new. Traditional criterias by which journalistic content gets rated, has no real value anymore. It is not the foundation to decide “who gets my money”.

If this is true, we have a real problem.
1) real-time systems will win in the end
2) The amount of “new” content / information is really quite limited compared with remixed (almost crap) content. Even harder, you have to have a lot of background and specific domain-knowledge to actually contribute new information.

“Would that naturally force us to become a crap factory?”
YES for the reasons I just mentioned in the previous answer.

“Should we go the other way and open up all our analysis and data to the individual for a fee?”

NO because that would negate your need for self promotion which is particularly neccessary in the cacophony of today’s web. This isn’t a chicken and egg riddle. Freely accesible content must be self serving and promotional.
Would anyone pay? YES There are still discerning clients out there that do not want to wade though the crap and do want insightful, knowing, comment & analysis. They know the difference as much as you would know the difference between the taste of Moet versus Ripple.
In summation: I do not begrudge the proliferation of CCFs, or even tech blogs by self styled “experts” (some of these sit in high positions at very recognizable publications, as you well know). Instead, I see this as an opportunity made possible by the contrast in content that is likely apparent to the client. Our clients are receptive to our “regurgitated” news due to the nature and extent of daily searching we do and the intelligence behind our aggregation of the news. They are also receptive to the comments we make which, in each client’s case, are tailored to their specific concerns. (For example: A buy-side analyst, advising portfolio managers, has a completely different set of concerns versus the factory manager that is trying to make difficult capex decisions). Our clients are discerningly interested in our data and, of course, are always interested in our ability to advise key trends and issues before it hits the news and generates the resulting echos that you address in your remarks above. In other words, we regard it as a failure if a story that we call attention to reveals something that we haven’t already identified at least in a peripheral way as a trend or a likeley fall out. I think you share the same view that I have and I suspect your entire post is a bit tounge-in-cheek. You give it away when you wrote “instead of dumbing down to meet the masses, shouldn’t we really focus on smarting up to meet the right audience?” which was, most definitely, a rhetorical question. The answer, of course,is a respounding YES. Cheers & Happy Holidays

Paywalls are regarded as anathema by the web community – but in some respects that have definite advantages. Walling off content from the wider web creates a filter that leads the more discerning to content that’s exclusive and higher quality, and keeps junk traffic to a minimum. How to market these closed content portals? Via the open web, of course.