By general people go for the brand value, like education from Oxford,MIT,Cambridge etc.
I'm one among them.
Admitting that its difficult to see whether they are being overly introspective or critical,compared to Zaid Hamid or Hamid Gul they certainly seem to have a better understanding of the region,from an academic point of view.
The issue with these liberal western-viewpoint journalists is what they see in public is what they believe. Anything suggestion of anything happening behind the scenes or covertly is branded a conspiracy theory on sight. Look at the case of Raymond Davis - people were actually suggesting initially that calling him a CIA agent is a conspiracy theory. Now it seems that he (and by extension the CIA) has links with extremist groups who target Pakistan. That was (and still to an extent, but less now) called a conspiracy theory.
We know how crazy the world of spying and covert operations is, and people such as Zahid Hamid and Hamid Gul have sources in such places. I'll give you that most people probably won't believe them, which is fair enough, but here we're looking to get at the truth, and if you believe that everything that is being shown in public is what is happening, invariably you'll get tricked sooner or later. Zahid Hamid and Hamid Gul are not the best examples of these actually because they are nutcases, but people such as Ahmed Rashid, Nadeem Paracha, etc are the polar opposites in that they're not much better. Ahmed Rashid is actually one journalist who people might think talks sense, but when you follow him for years you begin to see how much crap he has spoken over the years. I've followed him for over half a decade now, and all I see from him is doomsday prediction for Pakistan since day 1. And I am not even exaggerating this one bit.
I look for journalists who are somewhere in between. Obviously I being a patriotic Pakistan would like seeing journalists who are slightly more tilted toward the Hamid Gul/Zaid Hamid side (but not too extremely tilted as these two guys are).
But I'll say this much. Obviously what one considers 'speaking sense' and 'better understanding' in this particular case is relative to their beliefs. We know that the western world beliefs dominate this world. What is really a conspiracy theory (and a popular one) in the west is not called a conspiracy theory until you look deep into it. For instance, the whole show of Iraq having WMDs was no doubt a conspiracy theory. But it wasn't called such? Why not? The reason is because it was said by western nations, and was a quite popular sentiment in the western public as well. When western nations say something, it generally doesn't get considered a conspiracy theory, because their voices are so big and vast, and when you hear everything over and over again like that, you don't think it's a conspiracy theory. Add to that the massive western media, who though may go against the government on domestic issues, they generally support them when it comes to international issues.