Where are the Good Business Pundits?

Any discipline, any movement, any subject matter needs some GOOD punditry before it can be taken seriously.

Politics have it; such an overload it's not even worth mentioning, but there must be some good material out there.

Sports have it; buried beneath a smog of repetitive chatter on talk radio there are the occasional witty gems commentating away on your favorite sports. Bill Simmons from ESPN (aka the Sports Guy) is my favorite example. His punditry is so good you get the feeling he actually could be a GM, although he's mysteriously stopped posting columns in recent weeks. Where have you gone, Bill?

FastCompany (surprise surprise) uncovered and labeled and glamorized a new era of business starting with the first dotcom craze, and I'm a huge fan of The Motley Fool for savvy and yet witty investing commentary. Other areas of business have it to different extents: Donny Deutsch, Tom Peters, etc. These pundits all make persuasive proposals in entertaining ways; there's a reason they command huge audiences (huge, relative to the new era of media, with 400 cable channels and 1,000+ new magazines segmenting the audience more than ever).

What the Good Business Movement needs is a good pundit. "Green" is the most ripe segment of the Movement for pundit coverage. It probably gets more media than all other aspects (ethics, philanthropy, social entrepreneurship) combined (we've certainly slanted a bit too much toward Green so far). And don't mistake my point; there are some excellent sources of green coverage; see to the right for links to TreeHugger and Grist, among others. Grist.org founder Chip Giller is an intelligent and witty voice for the environmental movement, to be sure.

What the discussion of Businesses That Do Good to bring some more legitimacy and exposure, much the way that VC investment brings legitimacy to a new area of technology, is a strong, witty, cross media voice- one with some level of an established Q-Rating (but not TOO much of a Q-rating that we question their business acumen in exchange for their shameless self-promotion)- to get on his or her soapbox and tell businesses HOW to make money by doing good.

I'd also settle for a good lampoonist- of which Politics already has plenty. Even Steve Jobs has his own shadow prankster, outed this week as a Forbes writer (the Fake Steve Jobs).