Sadly, Alex is right. The last Google algo change really messed things up. Whether they’ll change it back again no-one knows but as it stands content most definitely ISN’T king.
I can give you one example of a site with less than 10 pages that ranks #4 in Google for a very competitive term and has PR5, just through thousands of paid-for irrelevant links.
The supermarket / magazine analogy is only half right. Of course, you’d want to produce a high quality informative magazine that people would want to read but if you can’t afford the advertising or distribution costs it won’t even reach the supermarket shelves.
People can only read the content that they’re directed to…