Columbia Journalism Review writes about Jeff Severns Guntzel’s crowdsourced reporting

The Columbia Journalism Review has posted an article about MinnPost’s newest reporter, Jeff Severns Guntzel, and his efforts to engage readers in his reporting process.

The article talks about Jeff’s recent post on his MinnPost Intelligencer blog inviting readers to help him analyze the flow of stimulus money to Minnesota, and also refers to earlier efforts, including one that gathered information from people knowledgeable about the financial squeeze on the public defender system. 

The CJR article reports that Jeff notes “that it has to be a truly collaborative experience for the readers to stay excited about volunteering their time. For that, he needs to stay in contact with them, ask them about the experience and what they’d recommend to other people who want to help out. ‘To be successful, this kind of thing has to go in both directions,’ Guntzel says. ‘I can’t just absorb all the information and write a new post; I feel like I have to build a relationship.’”