The Reading Experience has a recent post that poses some interesting ideas about “this point in the development of the weblog as a forum for serious discourse”:

• What exactly can be done in a blog post?
• Blogging about blogging can become just another variation on navel-gazing.
• Certainly blog posts can be casual or superficial, but I see nothing in the nature of the form that requires they be so.
• Plenty of literary weblogs are focused on longer posts that are frequently part of cross-blog debates that at their best have a seminar-like feel without being pompous.

And so on…