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Live video: Sen. Franken sworn in

Paul Schmelzer — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:21:31 +0000

Eight months after election day, Al Franken will be sworn in today as Minnesota’s second U.S. senator. The UpTake brings the video of the 11:15 ceremony — in which Franken will be sworn in on a bible owned by the family of the late Sen. Paul Wellstone — at 11 a.m. CT. C-SPAN will also be streaming the ceremony live.

Live video: Al Franken in D.C.

Paul Schmelzer — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:51:14 +0000

Photo: Chris Steller

The UpTake’s Noah Kunin is tracking Sen.-elect Al Franken’s arrival in Washington, D.C., and — in advance of tomorrow’s swearing-in — offers live video of Franken’s 12 noon CT press conference:

Video: Minnesota’s five-month Senate election slog compressed into 16 minutes

Chris Steller — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 17:50:17 +0000

Here’s a 16-minute video recap of Minnesota’s five-month slog (so far) to elect a new U.S. senator. It’s the work of those stalwart Franken-Coleman multimedia chroniclers at The UpTake.

For fans of this sort of compressed video history, there’s also “Minneapolis in 19 Minutes Flat,” a film shown at the Minnesota Historical Society’s Mill City Museum in Minneapolis, with comic narration by storyteller Kevin Kling.

But if it’s the visual history of the recount that really checks your box, check out MnIndy’s “On Monotony: The best and worst of recount photography.”

GOP former guv joins Mondale in calling for Coleman to concede

Paul Schmelzer — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:26:14 +0000

Concede? Moi?

With Norm Coleman set to address the media at 3 p.m. CST, speculation abounds about whether the now-former senator will file a lawsuit to prevent certification of a win by Al Franken or, less likely, concede. One GOP bigwig has weighed in, urging Coleman to step down: Former Gov. Arne Carlson, who attended the 1996 event during which Coleman switched parties to become a Republican, predicts Coleman will lose any lawsuit he files. Carlson, who supported Coleman’s ‘98 gubernatorial bid, also said that a protracted battle, after 62 days of recounting, would hurt Coleman’s public image. By contrast, he said, “There’s no disgrace in losing.” He joins former Vice President Walter Mondale in calling for Coleman to throw in the towel.

Meanwhile, media outlets from bloggers to mainstream newsrooms have been reminding Coleman of his Nov. 5 statement that if he was in Franken’s position — behind in the vote count — he’d drop out.

“I would step back,” he said. “I just think the healing process is so important, the possibility of making a change of this magnitude in the voting system we have is so remote.” This morning Minneapolis’ Fox 9 was the latest to chime in, leading off its story quoting Coleman’s words the day after Election Day.

Coleman’s Nov. 5 comment that he’d “step back”:

MnIndy video: Coleman’s staff ejects reporter from press conference

Chris Steller — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:07:55 +0000

U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s campaign staff ejected a Minnesota Independent reporter (that would be me) from a press conference at campaign headquarters Wednesday afternoon. I made it as far as the inside of a small press conference room at a drab office park in St. Paul where I was just about to settle into the chair that seemed least conveniently located to the exit when a staffer asked who I was with. When I said the Minnesota Independent, he said I’d have to leave. To my protest that MnIndy is a news outlet like others represented there, the staffer replied, “Right, and it’s funded by George Soros,” and he escorted me out. It’s the fourth time local independent media have been denied access to the senator’s media availability. Video (think Blair Witch Project in the most boring office interior on Earth) after the jump. Spoiler alert: Norm’s door is extremely squeaky.

Media Monitor: RNC tweets, Secret Service tip-offs and an ode to ‘Ameirca’!

Paul Schmelzer — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:55:26 +0000

Tweeting the RNC: Picking up where MnIndy’s Tom Elko left off, Twin Cities-based journalist Maryn McKenna looks at how Twitter, “the police scanner of 21st century newsroom,” aided RNC news coverage, working in props for local indymedia: “[I]t’s clear that smaller operations with much smaller budgets — the Minnesota Independent (funded by the nonprofit Center for Independent Media), The Uptake, and Twin Cities IndyMedia — not only kept up with the majors but often lapped them.”

Secret Service briefed MSM on RNC threats? MinnPost’s David Brauer points out shocking video of a WCCO cameraman freaking out on RNC protesters — captured on film by competitor KARE — while not realizing that the crowd was barring him because a man was having a seizure nearby. While many of us covering the RNC were on edge, Brauer shares a surprising reason that’s new to me: According to WCCO union steward Dave Chaney, the station was “getting emails from the Secret Service all day long that there were people in that crowd that were going to try to attack,” Chaney said. One threat involved a “gentleman who was supposed to be a black belt in karate who was going to try to assault one of us.” Funny: We in the independent media never got such Secret Service notifications.

Local heads top reporters’ org: St. Cloud Times reporter Dave Aeikens has takent the reins as president of the national Society for Professional Journalists. MN-SPJ has the video.

“Ameirca!” My favorite on-screen RNC typo.

The Uptake’s update

Tom Elko — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 17:30:42 +0000

Groundbreaking citizen-based media group The UpTake announced the relaunch of its website today. The UpTake focuses on training and assisting citizen journalists in reporting the political news of the day and becoming an engaged part of the media. The group’s emphasis on video content was highlighted by a live webcast of Tuesday’s mega-rally for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.
The new design allows for registered users to rank the stories and features discussion boards, future stories and lists. The site also utilizes Minneapolis-based community web developer Zanby for much of the back-end.
In other Minnesota-based community journalism news, Ed Kohler of The Deets previews the dramatic renovations happening right here.

Live from Iowa, It’s The UpTake

Paul Schmelzer — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 13:40:32 +0000

Four Minneapolis-based citizen videobloggers from The UpTake are heading to Iowa today to join three reporters already on the ground to cover the presidential caucuses. They’ve got an ambitious news plan — from reporting on get-out-the-vote efforts and updates from headquarters of key candidate to victory parties and views from greater Iowa — but here’s what’s innovative: they’ll be doing live streaming reports on the UpTake “channel” on January 3 and 4. (The channel will toggle between live reports and produced pieces throughout the event.) The site also offers real-time chat on these streams as well as a poll where visitors can vote on what stories The UpTake should cover. The UpTake’s Noah Kunin says the site has always been driven by the passions of its bloggers, and therefore the community, but these new technical features offer more immediate ways to interact. “It’s definitely an experiment,” he says. “Whether or not that works for a planned enterprise project like this, we definitely want to find out.”
The team will also include reports from rural Iowans, who’ll be recording their entire caucus experience, start to finish, for pieces to be aired on the channel.
The group will be doing independent coverage as well as coordinating efforts with MinMon’s sister site, Iowa Independent.

Journalism’s Bloodiest War

Paul Schmelzer — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 20:18:17 +0000

Deadliest war ever: For journalists, Iraq has been the bloodiest conflict in history, with three times as many reporters killed than during both World Wars combined. Whereas two died in WWI, 68 in WWII, 77 in Vietnam and 36 in the Balkans, the war in Iraq has already seen the deaths of 206 journalists and media assistants (two others are still missing and 14 are known to be kidnapped). Around 80 to 90 percent of them are Iraqi, contracted by out-of-country news organizations.
“[W}hat makes Iraq more dangerous than the others is that the deaths are not accidental collateral damage from stray shells or from reporters being caught up in the fighting," The Independent reports. "Instead, many have been specifically targeted because of what they had reported or because they came from the wrong side of the sectarian divide." [Photo via RSF]
The UpTake, Veracified: Chuck Olsen and his merry band of videobloggers at The UpTake have struck a deal to partner with Talking Points Memo founder Josh Marshall. The group will be providing video content for Veracifier, dubbed “one of the top political video sites on the planet” by Olsen. He says he can’t say more til the ink is dry, so details to come.
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Kramer’s Bajillions

Paul Schmelzer — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 21:43:34 +0000

Minnpost unveils design: Two biggish announcements at last night’s media get-together at Minnpost: publisher Joel Kramer has hired on 612 Authentic, a local group of videographers, to bring motion to the site; and they’ll be doing five- to 10-minute segments on TPT’s Almanac “roughly every other week.” Kramer also unveiled mockups of the site design. The maroon-and-beige palette from the current splash page will stay, accompanied by a tightly packed grid of story ledes and a series of ink renderings by illustrator Hugh Bennewitz, that will go along with “Current Posts.” (I’m not a big fan: the cartoonish heads, like G.R. Anderson’s at right, seem too familiar — like The Rake meets Politico. Still, if I had to choose between having a photo or a sketch of me appear online, I’d go the arty route.)
The ads/money nexus: Kramer says they’ve received more than $120,000 from 260 member-donors, and that’s on top of the more than $1 million kicked in by eight local families. When I caught up with Chuck Olsen, Executive Correspondent for The Uptake afterwards, he responded to Kramer’s announcement that, in principle, the site will have “no advertising designed to distract readers” from the content: No Strib-like Denny Hecker wallpaper or Bachman’s popups. Olsen, in his best Kramer impersonation, said, “We won’t have intrusive ads… because we have a hundred bajillion dollars!”
In which Lambert and Rybak earn: 1.) Slots on Strib gossip columnist C.J.’s shit list, and 2.) a conjoined nickname, Lambak!
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