The existing system significantly favors the incumbent, who only needs to win a single match to retain his title for another cycle. Most other sports do not hand the title holder a free pass to a 1:1 match. Anand could have shaken up the chess world, and won himself a great deal of respect, by offering to go through qualification himself, but he didn't.
He holds the title which because of its tradition and all the battles fought for it has big value for chess fans around the world.
You're begging the question here. The author is saying that the title should not have so much value.
What author wishes doesn't matter, you need decades of tradition, games and drama to have this kind of value. It already exists and we can just move it at will. One thing to do is to exploit it by organizing new matches with maybe some adjustments to qualification system (and maybe even getting rid of incumbent advantage). Other thing which author proposes is just scratching it all off and start a new thing - this new thing being yet another tournament (with it being long bringing disadvantages I wrote about in other post).
Again, it's like scratching Wimbledon because it's on grass or World Cup because winning it is easier than placing say 4th in Primera Division. Still people care 10x more about "silly" Worlc Cup as they care way more about anachronic World Championship match.
New system might be fairer, better, w/e but just because it's new you just lost many fans, interest and sponsors.
He holds the title which because of its tradition and all the battles fought for it has big value for chess fans around the world.
You're begging the question here. The author is saying that the title should not have so much value.