Below is a sample presentation that I will be giving to our middle school staff this week regarding close reading, if you'd care to check it out. It was my first time using PowToon, so please forgive any errors you see in the timing. You can check out the resources I used in it here and here and here.
In other words, it teaches students to think. And, not only that, it teaches them skills they will actually need to use independently after they graduate. Much more useful, in my opinion, than most of the content that is held sacrosanct in classrooms these days.
Does it take more time to do a close read? Yep. In fact, that's the one complaint I hear the most about close reading--that it takes too much class time. But any skill such as this will take more time to teach students at first. If it is done consistently by all teachers over the course of a school year, then it will become a habit that takes less and less time on the part of the teacher and the student.
And, like I said, it makes students do that "thinking" thing--and teaches them a skill to help them do that thinking on their own, well after they leave your classroom and your content behind.