Why read blogs?

I’d really like to know. I’m still mostly a print guy–I subscribe to a dozen magazines and read more of them on-line (as well as Google News daily), especially through the excellent Arts and Letters Daily digest.

My university-age sons enjoy blogs, however, as do many of my students. So that’s what I’d like to know from anyone who happens upon this blog: Why do you read them? Why do you respond to them? And what would you like to see in a blog like this?

Here’s what I’m afraid of: that I’ll spend time blogging that could better be spent reading and thinking, and then writing less, but of better quality and to a bigger audience.

Am I just technologically behind the times? I’d really like to know.