The UpTake is a citizen-fueled, online video news gathering organization. <br /><br />Since its inception in July 2007, The UpTake has advanced the frontier of news gathering through social media. <br /><br />TheUpTake.org is our online news channel focused on politics and the media. The site is built on a social networking and video publishing platform that allows us to scale our coverage and organize our citizen journalists. We use cutting edge technologies like cell phone cameras loaded with live broadcasting software to instantly publish our reports to the web. <br /><br />Our goal is to empower everyday people to become citizen journalists. <br /><br />In an era of draconian cuts to news organizations of every type, citizen journalism is more important than ever. Citizen journalists are empowered to report and record news from their perspective. The UpTake Institute, our training arm, will support and help focus their efforts. <br /><br />In the last year, The UpTake's groundbreaking coverage has been reported on by the Associated Press, the BBC, CNN and many local Minnesota news outlets and sites. Our videos have been seen by millions of viewers, and citizen journalists in 22 states have submitted stories to us.