In her blog Virginia Postrel comments on Andrew Sullivan’s decision to give up his blog.  Here’s what she said:

Even the few brilliant scholars (Tyler Cowen, Eugene Volokh, Grant McCracken) who make blogging seem like it should
foster serious thought limit their posting to topics they want to mull
over in public. Current-affairs blogging of the
Sullivan/Instapundit/name your favorite type is inherently quick,
dirty, and disposable. It may add to the public discourse, but it
doesn’t tend to deepen the blogger’s own thinking. That, plus sheer
laziness, is why this blog has never promised more than a few posts a
week, and why I’ve given up my think-magazine-editor instincts to voice
an opinion on everything. For a full-blown argument, I want to write
something for a sizable audience and get paid. And I don’t really want
to post half-baked ones.

Right now, I’m researching a couple of long-term projects–one
on variety and one on glamour–and (barely) financing the research,
which involves some travel and reporting, with article assigments.
Blogging will be quite light through February."

She’s quite right.  Although I think you can support the point that "instapundit" blogging (er, writing) is very time consuming.  That’s because the best "instpundits" seem to be the most well-read, insatiable consumers of comments, fact, fiction, news, rumors, innuendo, etc.  They "cut" the pieces they like, "paste" it in their blogs (or columns, or whatever), reference the original and then spice it with their own comments.

Sounds simple but like anything done well it takes time, toil and talent.  And anything that takes the three Ts generally leads to burnout.  And honestly I think it leads to readers’ grazing as well; we get bored of the same-old, same-old.  Our appetite changes and we move on to other writers, covering the same issues, but perhaps in a pithier manner.

Which leads me to think that the blogs, er writers, with legs will actually be those with consistent depth and thoughtfulness, not necessarily those with a focus on rapidity and breadth.  That helps keep the reader and writer focused and engaged.

Final point: I’m also beginning to think that we will all begin to feel RSS overload. I know I am.  I’m deleting feeds left and right because I just can’t read them all.  Which do I keep?  Let’s just say that most of the feeds I keep average 3 or fewer posts a day.