What You Almost Didn’t See In Today’s Court Hearing On MN Shutdown

Ramsey County District Court Judge Kathleen Gearin is no stranger to cameras in the courtroom. But despite requests from the media (The UpTake included) she decided that this morning’s hearing on the looming shutdown of Minnesota government would not be televised.

Then the public showed up in her court room, spilling out into the halls. By lunchtime Judge Gearin was reconsidering her decision and the second half of the hearing was moved to a larger courtroom and a pool TV camera was allowed in. The UpTake like a lot of other media in town scrambled to get our equipment in place and we were able to livestream the rest of the hearing, visible here and on the Pioneer Press website.

Covering it the old fashioned way – court art by Ken Avidor

But had Judge Gearin not changed her mind, we were ready to cover this the old-fashioned way. Ken Avidor was in the courtroom sketching the proceedings. Below is his art from the morning. While Ken’s work does capture some of what is going on, it can’t replace the video of the morning proceedings that you can’t see.