Blogging is just one medium among many. It casts a wide net, but of course it has its drawbacks. The advantage of blogging is that it's ridiculously cheap, globally accessible, and very efficient. You can go from idea to publishing in a matter of hours, and you can reach a lot of people if you commit to mastering the medium. I also like it because my mind is always churning through new ideas anyway, and I enjoy sharing those ideas instantly.
But blogging is certainly not as expressive as audio, video, or face-to-face communication, and it's not a great medium for expressing and organizing complex ideas. However, there's no reason you can't take advantage of a variety of media to suit your style. You can be a multi-media human being.
For example, I like doing podcasts when I feel the need to be more expressive than plain text. I thought about doing podcast #20 as a series of articles, but I felt I should speak it rather than write it. I could also post videos down the road.
Although blogging may not be the most optimal route to financial independence for most people, if you can build a high-traffic blog, you're basically golden. You'll have direct access to the people you serve without having to deal with a middleman. So if you want to sell products or services or put on seminars or even just do joint-venture promotions for products you like, you can do that for free via your blog without having to spend money on marketing. That makes it really hard to fail. Also, whenever you deal with a third party such as a book publisher, you'll be bringing to the table proof that people are already interested in your content.