Most full-time, high volume writers or journalists are used to this - it's not a question of self respect any more than questioning the self respect of someone who works in WalMart. You can still take pride in (and enjoy) your work even if it's under someone else's direction.

On a much smaller scale, I, a small-time 'problogger', do the same. Monitoring trends, tracking things I know will be coming up.. For example, it's in my calendar that next Thursday it'll be 18 years since Matz started to develop Ruby - you can be sure I'll be writing about it ;-)