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Movie: http://UpTake-Editorial.groups.theuptake.org/rss/videogalleryView/id/2192/
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Senator-Elect Al Franken thanks The UpTake for its coverage of the recount and election trial. Franken talks about how his campaign staff insisted that he take a vacation the first week of the trial and how he spent his vacation watching The UpTake.

 

Franken talks about health care, the late Senator Paul Wellstone and the logistics for his swearing in next week. Franken has two words of advice for any DFL candidate who may possibly end up running against Norm Coleman for Governor: "call me."

 

Related Coverage:

Minnesota Independent story about this interview

Movie: http://UpTake-Editorial.groups.theuptake.org/rss/videogalleryView/id/2190/
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By Grace Kelly

While Tom Rukavina has not formerly declared, Tom spoke in the time sent aside for candidates for governor at a Minnesota DFL central committee meeting. Tom Rukavina is a DFL Representative to the Minnesota State House from Virginia. This a country of wide open spaces with many bars, a drinking culture. So it will probably not surprise you to find out that Tom Rukavina was driving erratically and was therefore cited for a fourth-degree DUI in 2004. Tom Rukavina totally cooperated with the Sheriff. In the next election, Tom Rukavina won by a higher percentage than before. Minnesota Brown described Tom this way:

State Rep. Tom Rukavina is one of the great characters of the Iron Range. I mean great in that he personifies our unusual culture rather well and that his heart is usually in the right place, too. (Minnesota Brown)

Tom Rukavina can champion surprising populist causes. Tom championed into law the requirement that alcohol be available to all legal-age buyers at the new TCF Bank Stadium at the University of Minnesota or that no alcohol at all be available. Previously, the U of M’s plan was just to offer alcohol in the premium seats.

“There was an overwhelming feeling in the Legislature that what the Board of Regents did was elitist,” Rukavina said. “If you can afford to sit in the premium seats, you can drink chardonnay, and if you sit in the cheap seats, you get water or pop … We didn’t think that was right.” (Uwire)

Tom Rukavina has Ventura like appeal that captures many media stories.

Movie: http://UpTake-Editorial.groups.theuptake.org/rss/videogalleryView/id/2188/
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From our good friends at GRITtv with Laura Flanders comes this interview with UpTake Executive Director Jason Barnett.  GRITtv's description is below:

 

The Al Franken-Norm Coleman Senate race is finally over. After eight months of ballot counting, charges, and counter charges Minnesota's Supreme Court ruled 5-0 declaring Franken the winner. And Coleman conceded evidently deciding not to appeal to the nation's highest court. Through it all no one has followed the story more closely than The UpTake, a patchwork of community groups and organizations committed to making citizen journalism work. We speak to Executive Director Jason Barnett about the Franken decision, how the race was covered, and what The Uptake will be focusing on now that it's over.

 

This interview was part of GRITtv's July 1st, 2009 show which also included coverage on immigration reform.  Watch the entire episode here!  If you are interested in watching GRITtv, click here for information on broadcasts in your area.

Movie: http://UpTake-Editorial.groups.theuptake.org/rss/videogalleryView/id/2187/
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By Noah Kunin, Senior Political Correspondent 7/1/09

 

On the steps of the Minnesota State Capitol, Senator-Elect Al Franken thanked his staff and all Minnesotans for the 8-month wait for a second Senator. Senator-Elect Franken also pledged to infuse Minnesota values into the upcoming policy debates on everything from climate change to health care reform.

 

Senator-Elect Franken will be sworn in by the US Senate early next week.

Movie: http://UpTake-Editorial.groups.theuptake.org/rss/videogalleryView/id/2184/
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Governor Tim Pawlenty has taken his power to cut budgets "too far" according to Minnesota Speaker of The House Margaret Anderson Kelliher. She made it very clear the legislature will react next session and trim those powers, bringing the 1930s era unallotment law more into line with what other states do.

 

The Speaker argued with Governor Pawlenty's Finance Commissioner Tom Hansen about who had done what to get Minnesota in such a budget mess. Anderson Kelliher accused Hansen of "trying to rewrite history for everyone in the room" by claiming the legislature had not passed a balanced budget. Hansen also called the way the budget was passed "untransparent".

 

That statement seems to contradict Governor Pawlenty's own rational for not having any public hearings about his budget cuts, otherwise known as unallotments. The Governor has said public hearings were not needed because the legislature had held many hours of hearings on the budget and all the facts were known.

Movie: http://UpTake-Editorial.groups.theuptake.org/rss/videogalleryView/id/2182/
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By Noah Kunin, Senior Political Correspondent 6/30/09

In a midday ruling, the Minnesota Supreme Court rejected Former Senator Norm Coleman's appeal to overturn the decision by the three judge Election Contest trial court that Al Franken won the the 2008 Senate Election in Minnesota.

 

Coleman, in a humble concession speech, (which The UpTake was not allowed to record) said the process has gone far enough. This video is Senator-Elect Al Franken's response, from his home in Minneapolis, MN.

 

While Senator-Elect Franken will be the 60th Democrat in the US Senate, he says it's more important that he will be the "2nd Senator from Minnesota". He is expected to be sworn in next week.

 

Related Coverage:

MN Supreme Court Ruling

Movie: http://UpTake-Editorial.groups.theuptake.org/rss/videogalleryView/id/2181/
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6/30/09 Video shot from Former Senator Norm Coleman's neighbor yard during his concession speech to Senator-Elect Al Franken.

Movie: http://UpTake-Editorial.groups.theuptake.org/rss/videogalleryView/id/2180/
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Hours after the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled on the long running US Senate race, Governor Tim Pawlenty signed the document certifying that Al Franken is now Minnesota's US Senator. The certificate was co-signed by Secretary of State Mark Ritchie. Franken will be sworn in when Congress returns from its 4th of July recess.

Movie: http://UpTake-Editorial.groups.theuptake.org/rss/videogalleryView/id/2177/
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By Noah Kunin, Senior Political Correspondent
6/29/2009


It may be more than a year away, but candidates on both sides of the aisle are lining up to run for Governor of Minnesota in 2010.  With current Governor, Tim Pawlenty, declining to run for a third term the race has opened up considerably.


The UpTake will be following all the candidates - in this video, we catch up with Matt Entenza campaigning for a clean energy economy in Mankato.

Movie: http://UpTake-Editorial.groups.theuptake.org/rss/videogalleryView/id/2175/
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Editor's note: The UpTake is featured along with journalists Bob Woodward, Katie Couric, Arianna Huffington and others as part of YouTube's Reporters' Center.  This is our video contribution - how to organize a video citizen media operation.

Scroll down to the bottom of the story and you'll see the list of free services we use to run The UpTake!

 

Script:

 

You may have caught our live coverage of the Republican National Convention.  We seemed to have cameras where ever the action was and were reporting what was happening hours if not days before the legacy media.

So how did The UpTake, a non-profit that operates on a shoestring and the kindness of donors, manage to out-do the multi-million dollar corporate media?  Simple: Train, Organize and Crowd source.


We discovered people learn the most when we do hands-on, one-on-one sessions to cover the basics.  Most important was to give people feedback on what they did.


Now you have a bunch of people who can run a camera and want to cover news.  That’s great!  But what are they all going to do?  This is where applying the same organization techniques used in political campaigns comes into play.


We turned to free services available on the web to keep track of volunteers, story ideas, events and of course equipment.  The challenge was to connect volunteers with story assignments and equipment.  We didn’t have our own equipment to start, so we created a database of equipment our volunteers owned and were willing to lend out.  We let people submit story ideas to our website.

The hard part was finding volunteers to cover those stories.  So we put one person in charge of just connecting volunteers and stories.



(video of Recount and trial)
Organizing volunteers was integral to our marathon coverage of Minnesota’s US Senate recount and Election Contest Trial.  The UpTake was the ONLY media to cover every minute of this and thousands around the world watched daily... for several months. 



Standup: Organizing can be as low-tech as listing what might happen on a sheet of paper and asking people who is interested in going there with a camera.  It can also be as high-tech as using the cutting edge tools.


Using Cover it Live and Twitter during live events we’re able let our audience help us with the reporting. The time stamp on both services helps us locate the important snippets of video out of the hours we record... allowing our volunteers to quickly edit clips that are interesting.

Using a free service called Tubemogul, we can publish those clips to You Tube, Blip and more than a dozen other video websites in a matter of minutes.

During the RNC we used crowd sourcing on twitter to weretrack where news was happening by searching for the RNC hashtag or following particular people’s tweets.

Since our volunteers were dispersed all over downtown, we could have someone on the scene in minutes.  And thanks to a free service called Qik, we were able to stream live video of the event as it happened.

We use two kinds of phones for live streaming: The Nokia N-95 and the iPhone.   Both lack a good lens and a good microphone.  But we were able to solve part of that problem by using adaptors to plug in a professional microphone.   These phones gave us another important advantage: police couldn’t confiscate our video.


That’s an important consideration because police arrested dozens of journalists, including one of our own. Once the video was streamed from the phone, it was on a server where the police couldn’t reach it.

We still sent people out with regular tape cameras... and they came back with compelling video that we quickly captured, edited and distributed for the whole world to see.


The UpTake - a shoestring volunteer operation -- was able to do all of this not only because the technology to do it was easy and affordable... but because we were able to organize.  That is the secret ingredient in any citizen journalism organization... and it’s something we’re willing to teach others.

 

The free services The UpTake uses are:

Zanby (social networking, content management)

Google Docs (spreadsheets for statistical analysis, shared text documents for collaborative writing)

Zoho (Databases for volunteers and story ideas)

Cover It Live (live blogging)

Twitter (Crowd sourcing and reporting)

Tubemogul (Video distribution tool)

You Tube (Video distribution site)

Blip (Video distribution site)

Qik (Live video streaming from phones)

Livestream (Live video streaming from computers)

TOKYO, July 6 (Xinhua) -- Japan sends two Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) destroyers for anti-piracy missions off Somalia Monday under a new law authorizing

Fears that the Arabian Sea and Yemeni coast are new targets. SOMALI pirates have once again shifted their area of focus. AKE’s Marine Piracy Threat Assessment shows a rise in the number of pirate attacks in the Arabian Sea

July 5, 2009 (Addis Ababa) - The United States do not recommend the intervention of Ethiopian troops in the neighboring Somalia despite the recent call by the Somali government for military support.

KISMAYO (HOL) - The Islamic administration that controls the strategic port town of Kismayo in southern Somalia has ordered businesses to close at prayer times.

A few days ago Somalia’s radical al Shabaab insurgents, who control large parts of the country and might well overrun the fragile government in Mogadishu, made an example of four teenage thieves.

MOGADISHU (HOL) - Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government said today that AMISOM troops will begin to fight alongside its troops from now. Until now, AMISOM troops have limited their operations to guarding few strategic places in the city including the sea and air ports as well as the Presidential Palace.

Such a powerful conviction and commitment by Maandeeq’s daughters and sons singing to this beautiful Flag, the Somali Flag, signifies the Independence Day –A memorable Day for all Somalis

Somalian radio journalist Mohamed Yusuf Ninile has been shot dead in the capital Mogadishu.

Prime Minister Raila Odinga has warned the International Community that it is courting grave danger by failing to stand by the threatened government in Somalia.

MOGADISHU, July 4 (Reuters) - At least 23 Somalis, mostly civilians, were killed and more than fifty wounded in Mogadishu on Saturday in the latest clash between government troops and insurgents, medics said.