Upshot was created because of new opportunities being created for journalists due to the spread of digital data and the Internet.
Upshot's highest priority will be to unearth data sets and analyze existing ones in ways that clarify and explain the news. In written articles, Upshot seeks to present their data in the most connecting way possible. Often a graphic can accomplish better than text. Graphics and interactive will be used on the site to help the non-experts to understand the news.
The Upshot's Editor, David Leonhardt, wrote on The New York Times Facebook page, "that the site's main goal is to help people to better understand big, complex stories like Obamacare, inequality and the real estate and stock markets. The Upshot will do this by writing in a direct, well-spoken way, the same voice that we might use when writing an email to a friend. Upshot will be conversational without being dumbed down.
Upshot will focus on politics and economics. Data-based reporting used to be a tool for investigative journalists. They would spend months sorting through statistics to appear with an abstract story. The world produces so much data in which computers can no analyze so quickly. Data-based reporting as become a big part of the daily news cycle.
The Upshot is collaboration between the journalists and readers. Upshot will publish the details behind their reporting such as the data for their stories. Upshot is hoping that readers will find angles they did not. Upshot wants the opinion of their readers.