Monica Guzman has been conducting meetups to connect with readers, build sources and find out what her readers want her and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to cover.

The fate of the PI is very much up in the air, but Guzman and her colleagues are still innovating and pushing the practice. Guzman in particular has been innovative with her work on The Big Blog, and her weekly meetups fit in well with her blogging.

Guzman began doing the meetups so she could get out of the office and meet her readers. Guzman’s job is to be a guide to Seattle and to help spur conversations on the PI’s Web site. A big part of her job is connecting with readers and cultivating conversations on the PI Web site, and it made sense for her to continue that in person.

“The way I thought of it was office hours,” she said. “If the point of my blog and the point of what I’m trying to do as a journalist is to find new ways to connect with people, why not do it in person?”

Guzman patterned her office hours after the weekly office hours that her professors had in college. She wanted a regular space for readers to be able to drop in and say hi. She also wanted to give people a forum to express their thoughts.

“I like that idea of being available often,” she said about why she decided to have the meetups weekly.

An average of about 10 people attend each session. She notifies readers about the meetups on her blog and on Twitter, and the meetups are at different venues around the city to encourage different people to attend. While there are regulars, the varying locations help ensure that the crowd is unique each week.

“The conversation is defined by the people there and what they want to talk about,” she said. ”There is no secret formula.”

Guzman has begun bringing along special guests that her readers are interested in. These special guests can be prominent bloggers and community members that have stories and lessons to share. It’s great if a story comes out of the interaction with her special guests, but it’s not a requirement.

The meetups are casual without a set agenda. She doesn’t generate a story out of each meetup, but story ideas have come out of her interactions with readers. She also has written stories based on what readers say at the meetups.

Ultimately, connecting more with her readers has allowed Guzman to do her job better.

“It absolutely helps me get to know the city better,” she said.

Many journalists would balk at spending time on meetups, fearing that they would be too much effort for too little output. Guzman said she has not run into those problems. In fact, it takes very little effort to get a meetup going with Web tools like blogs and Twitter.

“It’s kind of astonishing how little time and effort it actually takes,” she said. “It just starts with, ‘I’m going to be here.’”

Some other topics discussed:

• What problems has she faced with the meetups?
• How do her editors originally feel about the meetups? How did she convince them to let her work on something that doesn’t always generate content?
• How have her editors and her coworkers’ opinions changed of the meetups?
• Do any of her coworkers also conduct meetups?

Click here to stream the interview. Or download the MP3.