I arrived late in the run, but i discovered about a year ago Daring Fireball a hugely popular blog by John Gruber about, mainly Apple. It is brilliantly written and so well informed you wonder if the guy is not working in Steve Jobs' office. But after about a year of reading it i decided to stop. The reason? It is impossible to interact with its writer (which he explains here).
At least from my modest point of view. And for me interacting means having the possibility to drop a comment and participate in a conversation, something i can do on all the great blogs i love to read (like avc.com )
The content, most of the time creates the desire to react and provokes the spark of a conversation but it is killed on the spot by not letting users comment on site. I don't know any better way to make a blog a conversational media. Otherwise this is just a good old tribune behind a (Daring) Firewall.
So i could deal with it right? Well no. I don't like to be provoked and not having the possibility to react. I am sure a lot of John's readers feel frustrated and probably used to this.
When i was writing TechCrunch France i was handling up to 100 comments per posts. I was reading every single one of them and most of the time answering them. Frankly the most interesting part of blogging is the interaction with the users in a close to live conversation in comments. I can understand some people prefer to kill the noise and don't have the time to deal with it (although there are ways to manage this efficiently if you have the right commenting system, like disqus or intensedebate with moderation and email interaction)
Anyways. No comments on a good blog is not a deal for me. This is why i am also stopping reading many newspapers.
The value is not in the information or the point of view but the conversation. And even in Chaos, i prefer a living organic publication rather than a singled-voice site