You are technically right, but if it takes to be a "tatus-obsessed WP dork" to become a WP administrator - then it is a problem in itself, isn't it?
The worst you can say about it is that the admin culture repulses newcomers. But the WP model doesn't really demand long-term commitment from contributors in order to work. WP will improve steadily based on casual contributions. And so adminship is really more of an inefficiency than a serious problem.
Did you just make that up? I like it.
The only serious threat to the encyclopedia would be a force that would prevent strong writing on relevant subjects from being incorporated into it, or a force that persistantly corrupted that strong writing once it was incorporated. This link is just drama.
What lazy or corrupt journalists choose to do with the content in the encyclopedia is a problem outside the purview of the encyclopedia.
I think that most serious Wikipedia vandalism (not page-blanking, but the kind of shit that is difficult to spot and refute, such as transposing digits in population figures) is done to spite those assclowns.