I appreciate your substantive reply.
"Steem's reward system is fundamentally flawed. It is not based on a quality selective process but on a wealthy-investor-decides process. In the next hardfork this fact will grow even more pronounced."
"The argument is that these huge investors will reward top quality work for the sake of creating a successful environment that benefits their investment in a trickle down system."
I couldn't agree more, and am not likely to despise trickle down economics any less than you. In every case I have observed, such is nothing more than a ruse that soon proves to increase concentration of wealth in the wallets of the wealthy, and none of it trickles down. However, the extant system of rewards on Steem is simply encouragement of profiteering by those with substantial stake. HF21 will, as you point out, make this much worse. The median payout last I checked was .01 SBD, while the average payout was ~15 times that. A couple dozen whales are getting huge payouts, and about ~90% of rewards end up in their wallets.
"If you spend a decent amount of time hunting out quality journalistic work, written originally on Steem, I believe you will find that it is rare. Not to insult the project, but what you often see is dlike links from other sites."
I agree with this too. However, Deep Dives features some of the best independent journalism I have found on any platform anywhere, ever. There are several journalists of irrefutably high quality on Steem today, and Deep Dives has featured some of them. I have even been once amongst their number, to my delight.
"I don't believe submission fees will be any barrier to entry."
I do not agree. I do hope that I am wrong, and that your project achieves stellar success. Good journalism is not only critical to the success of Steem, but free society everywhere.
Thanks!