21st century readers want high-price punditry — not the crap they’re peddling today

In a blog post, Umair Haque, the director of the Havas Media Lab, contended that media companies will survive if they eschew mindless punditry and scandal-mongering and instead invest in high-minded, smart commentators, in the same manner as The Economist and The Financial Times . Why? “Controversy … is worth a great deal only in terms of low-value readers,” Haque wrote. “Your average radical libertarian Ayn Rand-worshipping global warming denialist isn’t exactly a high-value read…