According to the Journalism Iconoclast, beat blogging benefits journalists by giving them more free time to do core reporting.

Beat blogging allows for news to be posted, without the "man on the street" quotes that usually take up a lot of time. Instead, users can leave their own comments on articles, reply to other comments, have converstations and add a community feel to the story.

Meanwhile, instead of getting quotes from "real people" like it is common for print journalists to do, beat blogging journalists have more time to do other stories.

Source: Journalism Iconoclast through Journerdism