We have to accept that verbal meetings give more influence to those who feel comfortable raising their voice, speaking, and making themselves noticed. Those meetings primarily benefit the socially dominant. Written updates, on the other hand, are more objective, and if everyone writes them, there is no social bias.
It happens a lot; in verbal meetings, we favour people who are more confident speaking, even if they objectively did less work, so opting for a written update regime changes the focus to what really matters.
Some people say not everyone feels comfortable writing, so we'd be exchanging one bias for another, but I'm not so sure about it. Lists are easy; they don't need special social skills or even writing skills. They are mandatory for everyone, and they just require having something to add to them.
If you can't write what you did on a simple list, maybe you haven't done that much. If some employees have a hard time writing, management should do something about that, but I definitely think writing is way easier than speaking in public.
Maybe some people don't like updates like this because they were succeeding using only their social skills, and now they have to get to work. It's normal; it takes time. We live in a society that consistently rewards that. I even get tired of reading internet posts about how upper management always rewards those who look stressed over those actually working.
At any rate, this is just my opinion, and I'm open to debate if anyone thinks this is not the best route to take; I just want to hear consistent arguments as to why that is.