Why bother blogging?

Over at A Very Remote Period Indeed, Julien Riel-Salvatore has written an interesting piece entitled, somewhat stealthily, "Well, look at that ..." in which he considers the journey from blog post to journal article, and the benefits of using a blog

as a way of forcing myself to articulate first reactions to articles and newsreports that I read, and to engage a wider audience in debates over archaeology, anthropology, and other topics.

I'm reminded of the wide-ranging discussion that developed around Bill Caraher's series on Metablogging the Ancient World, which touched on many other aspects of practice. I'm a bit at a loss as to how to round up or point out all the threads of that discussion, ranging as it did across multiple blogs and even some other media, so I'll just lamely point at Chuck's earlier post on the subject.

And that probably launches a new thread: supposing we wanted to round up and cite a such a wide-ranging discussion? How best to do it?