Some people need to stop crying, Ezine was being used as a tool for submitting spun articles at insane spam rates, generating traffic to those articles, and they were making money off adsense. Can you blame Google for coming out with an update to stop auto bloggers and people making tonnes of money from websites/blogs/articles that feature utterly nonsensical content?
Google was right for penalizing this site as well as some of the other top article websites. However, don't fully believe Google, submitting articles is still one of the major ways if not the best way to get your websites ranked. Spread out unique content across the internet, use the many thousands of article directories available to you (many of which have not been penalized), and you'll still find yourself ranked in the top 5 or 10 for incredible keywords.
Of course Matt Cutts is going to come out with a video promoting Panda and how people shouldn't do article marketing, they have a lot to gain from doing this, in particular they have vested interest in people investing money in their company via adwords and other avenues. Why would they tell you what works in order to get ranked?
The guy said you should write natural content in order to gain natural backlinks and quick rankings, yeah, I'll see your website up there in 10 years; that is absolutely false information and will work only if you're chasing low competition niche keywords.
Don't be afraid to continue submitting articles, just make sure you're sending them to the right places.
In conclusion, avoid Ezine altogether. Their acceptance process is brutal and some of you sound like you're only using a few of the more 'popular' directories to do your submissions.