Why Do People Move Their Blogs to Chronicle of Higher Ed?

Bloggers I follow keep moving their blogs to the Chronicle network, and that kind of upsets me. I don’t like the format, it’s confusing and annoying. Also, I have a feeling that blogs lose a lot in terms of quality once they move there.

Take Tenured Radical, for example. I disagreed with most of what she wrote but at least her posts were always interesting, controversial, engaging, and fun. After she moved to the Chronicle, everything she writes has become bland, sanitized, and utterly boring. So I stopped following. (Read this post on students with autism, for example. There is just no substance to it. I have no idea what the blogger was even trying to say.)

Now another blogger I used to follow is moving to the network, and I will be dropping that blog, too.

Why are people doing this? For prestige? Popularity? Do they put this on their merit review, or something?