Per https://systemd.io/JOURNAL_FILE_FORMAT/, the benefits of the binary format are:
The systemd journal stores log data in a binary format with several features:
Fully indexed by all fields
Can store binary data, up to 2^64-1 in size
Seekable
Primarily append-based, hence robust to corruption
Support for in-line compression
Support for in-line Forward Secure Sealing
As a user system-administrator, I see the cryptographic checksum as a benefit of being able to show tampering evidence of on-system log files.