The UpTake is a Minnesota

Minnesota

Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

-based citizen journalist

Citizen journalism

Citizen journalism is the concept of members of the public "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information," according to the seminal 2003 report We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information...

 organization. It was founded in July 2007 and has provided online

ONLINE

ONLINE is a magazine for information systems first published in 1977. The publisher Online, Inc. was founded the year before. In May 2002, Information Today, Inc. acquired the assets of Online Inc....

 news coverage on a low budget since.

Because of its role as a provider of citizen journalism, The UpTake is a not-for-profit organization. As such, many of its journalists have to rely on technology, such as cell phone camera

Mobile phone

A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...

s, technically outclassed by professional equipment. This financial disadvantage has spurred The UpTake to develop innovative methods of low-cost information gathering and reporting, such as live broadcasting from cell phone camera feeds.

Staff

Board Chair: Chris Dykstra

Executive Director: Jason Barnett

Executive Producer: Michael McIntee

Chief Correspondent: Chuck Olsen

Senior Political Correspondent: Noah Kunin

Communications Director: Jennifer Whigham

The UpTake is presently led by board chair Chris Dykstra, executive producer Michael McIntee, and executive director Jason Barnett. Its staff includes many "everyday people" working as citizen journalists, and the "Contact Us" page on TheUpTake.org encourages anyone interested in working with The UpTake to contact McIntee or Barnett.

2008 Minnesota Senate election

The UpTake's profile increased dramatically during the disputed 2008 U.S. Senate election in Minnesota

United States Senate election in Minnesota, 2008

The 2008 United States Senate election in Minnesota took place on November 4, 2008. After a legal battle lasting over eight months, Al Franken from the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party defeated Republican incumbent Norm Coleman in one of the closest elections in the history of the Senate...

, the home state of The UpTake. The UpTake provided full coverage of the recount process, winning accolades and citations from fellow news blogs FiveThirtyEight.com

FiveThirtyEight.com

FiveThirtyEight is a polling aggregation website with a blog created by Nate Silver. Sometimes colloquially referred to as 538 dot com or just 538, the website takes its name from the number of electors in the United States electoral college...

 and MinnPost.com

MinnPost.com

MinnPost.com also known as MinnPost is a non-profit news website in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with a focus on Minnesota news. Its mission is "to provide high-quality journalism for news-intense people who care about Minnesota."...

 and local Minnesota

Minnesota

Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

 news outlets such as the Minnesota Independent

Minnesota Independent

The Minnesota Independent, formerly Minnesota Monitor, and sometimes known as MnIndy, is an independent online newsmagazine. It launched in August 2006, with a focus on coverage of political issues...

. On January 5, 2009, when the final batch of absentee ballot

Absentee ballot

An absentee ballot is a vote cast by someone who is unable or unwilling to attend the official polling station. Numerous methods have been devised to facilitate this...

s in the recount were opened, checked, sorted, and counted, The UpTake broadcast the entire process live via streaming video on TheUpTake.org. Its initial count for DFL

Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party

The Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party is a major political party in the state of Minnesota and the state affiliate of the Democratic Party. It was created on April 15, 1944, with the merger of the Minnesota Democratic Party and the Farmer–Labor Party...

 candidate Al Franken

Al Franken

Alan Stuart "Al" Franken is the junior United States Senator from Minnesota. He is a member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, which affiliates with the national Democratic Party....

's lead after the absentee ballots were sorted aloud was 223; the number appeared on breaking reports on other websites, including FiveThirtyEight.com, until an election official announced that Franken's unofficial lead was actually 225.

Recognition

The Center for Public Integrity listed The UpTake as one of its "Top Ten Websites from 2008". In a tongue-in-cheek reference to an infamous ballot challenge by Republican candidate Norm Coleman

Norm Coleman

Norman Bertram Coleman, Jr. is an American attorney and politician. He was a United States senator from Minnesota from 2003 to 2009. Coleman was elected in 2002 and served in the 108th, 109th, and 110th Congresses. Before becoming a senator, he was mayor of Saint Paul, Minnesota, from 1994 to 2002...

's campaign, the list identified The UpTake as:
On January 18, 2011, The UpTake announced it had become the first online-only news organization to get a seat in the Minnesota Capitol press room.

External links

The UpTake

About the UpTake