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I counted almost 50 textbooks in my apartment. Does this mean that I know 2/3 more about textbooks than the author of this piece does?
I've used textbooks and am teaching from a textbook, textbooks, they do three things.
(1) They give a reference to the student. At home they student will need something to reference when working, also some information might not be normally placed together but will have to be together in order to have a class. For instance, programming language books don't talk about data structures, and people who talk about data structures professionally usually want to write language agnostic books, but students will need both in one book.
(2) They help the student learn by reading, engaging another learning style for students who might not be that good at listening to lectures. I like to write notes down that I might not ever read again, to each their own.
(3) They help people who are experienced in their subject matter, but not as experienced in teaching organize themselves. If the teacher can weave a basket in their sleep, they will have forgotten how it is to not know something. Also teachers may have forgotten how or why to do certain parts of basket weaving because they might not personally use the techniques every day.

All of that being said, do you need a deep understanding on the textbook to teach? not really, you need to mostly know what you are talking about. If lesson plans have in fact been perfected so that the professor already can organize the information without gaps where the professor thinks something is obvious and the students do not, then the professor should deviate from the textbook. The textbook has done one of its jobs.

Will multimedia be The Silver Bullet? No. It can be a good lead bullet for students who like listening to video or interactive assignments or other possibilities of multimedia. You guys are going to still have to be smart like how you are already mostly, not dumb like the author of that editorial.