Company:DocumentCloud

From HandWiki
Short description: Website to search, analyze, annotate and publish documents
DocumentCloud
TypeNonprofit
Industry
  • Journalism
  • Publishing
  • Software
Founded2009
Headquarters
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania[1]
,
United States
Number of employees
5[2]
ParentInvestigative Reporters and Editors
Websitedocumentcloud.org

DocumentCloud is an open-source software as a service platform that allows users to upload, analyze, annotate, collaborate on and publish primary source documents. Since its launch in 2009, it has been used primarily by journalists to find information in the documents they gather in the course of their reporting and, in the interests of transparency, publish the documents. (As of May 2023) DocumentCloud users had uploaded more than 5 million documents.[3] Many of them are accessible via a public search portal.

DocumentCloud's development has led to the creation of several notable open-source projects, including Backbone.js,[4][5] Jammit and Underscore.js.[6][7] The majority of funding for DocumentCloud has come from grants by the Knight Foundation.

History

In 2009, journalists Scott Klein and Eric Umansky of ProPublica and Aron Pilhofer of The New York Times received a Knight News Challenge grant for initial development of the platform.[8][9][10][11] This first version of the DocumentCloud was built by the New York Times Digital team and included Elliott Malkin and Sascha Mombartz working on design and development by Jeremy Ashkenas, Ben Koski and Jake Harris.[12] Jeremy Ashkenas joined as lead developer, and DocumentCloud was incorporated as a nonprofit organization. By September 2009, two dozen media outlets including The Washington Post , The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune had signed on as beta testers.[13]

A public beta was announced[14] at the 2010 NICAR conference of Investigative Reporters and Editors, and within a year contributing news organizations had uploaded 1 million pages.[15]

In 2011, DocumentCloud received a second Knight News Challenge grant,[16] dissolved its own nonprofit entity, and merged with the nonprofit Investigative Reporters and Editors.[17][18] Since then, IRE has assumed primary responsibility for maintenance and development of the platform as well as managing its grant funding.

DocumentCloud received a third Knight grant in summer 2014, with primary goals including improved platform stability, new features, and developing a plan for financial sustainability.[19] Since its start, DocumentCloud accounts have been free to journalism organizations, but the organization has announced it will be implementing a pay model.[20]

On June 11, 2018, DocumentCloud and MuckRock announced they would be merging.[21]

Open-source projects

In addition to the platform itself, development of DocumentCloud has led to the creation of several open-source projects:

References

  1. ↑ "Who We Are". https://www.documentcloud.org/about. 
  2. ↑ "Who We Are". http://www.documentcloud.org/about. Retrieved 12 October 2015. 
  3. ↑ "DocumentCloud". https://www.documentcloud.org/app. 
  4. ↑ "Backbone.js". http://backbonejs.org/. 
  5. ↑ Ashkenas, Jeremy (13 October 2010). "Code Drop: Backbone.js". https://blog.documentcloud.org/blog/2010/10/code-drop-backbone-js/. 
  6. ↑ "Underscore.js". http://underscorejs.org/. 
  7. ↑ Ashkenas, Jeremy (28 October 2009). "Underscore.js: Our Second Open-Source Release". https://blog.documentcloud.org/blog/2009/10/underscore-dot-js/. 
  8. ↑ "Knight News Challenge: DocumentCloud". http://knightfoundation.org/grants/20083268/. 
  9. ↑ Seward, Zachary M. (17 June 2009). "Knight News Challenge: A grant to DocumentCloud promises a data boost for investigative journalism". http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/06/knight-news-challenge-a-grant-to-documentcloud-promises-a-data-boost-for-investigative-journalism/. 
  10. ↑ Kirkpatrick, Marshall (17 June 2009). "DocumentCloud Gets Funding to Create Research Memory Bank in the Sky". http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/documentcloud_gets_funding_to_create_research_memo.php. 
  11. ↑ Reagan, Gillian (18 June 2009). "Times, ProPublica Journos Get $719,500 for DocumentCloud". http://observer.com/2009/06/itimesi-propublica-journos-get-719500-for-documentcloud/. 
  12. ↑ McLean, Alan (27 March 2010). "A New View: Introducing Doc Viewer 2.0". https://archive.nytimes.com/open.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/27/a-new-view-introducing-doc-viewer-2-0/. 
  13. ↑ Seward, Zachary M. (24 September 2009). "DocumentCloud adds impressive list of investigative-journalism outfits". http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/09/documentcloud-adds-impressive-list-of-investigative-journalism-outfits/. 
  14. ↑ Townend, Judith (6 January 2010). "DocumentCloud aims to release a public beta in March 2010". http://blogs.journalism.co.uk/2010/01/06/documentcloud-aims-to-release-a-public-beta-in-march-2010/. 
  15. ↑ Ashkenas, Jeremy (28 February 2011). "A Million Pages". https://blog.documentcloud.org/blog/2011/02/a-million-pages/. 
  16. ↑ "Knight News Challenge: DocumentCloud Reader Annotations". 23 June 2011. http://knightfoundation.org/grants/20110146/. 
  17. ↑ Sonderman, Jeff (9 June 2011). "IRE takes over DocumentCloud as Knight funding expires". http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/135326/ire-takes-over-documentcloud-as-knight-funding-expires/. 
  18. ↑ Bracken, John (9 June 2011). "News Challenge Success Story Finds a Home". http://www.knightfoundation.org/blogs/knightblog/2011/6/9/news-challenge-success-story-finds-home/. 
  19. ↑ "DocumentCloud, an annotation tool for journalists, to improve features and become a standard in newsrooms with $1.4 million from Knight Foundation". 27 June 2014. http://www.knightfoundation.org/press-room/press-release/documentcloud-annotation-tool-journalists-improve-/. 
  20. ↑ DeBarros, Anthony (10 August 2015). "A Summer Day's Worth of Updates". https://blog.documentcloud.org/blog/2015/08/a-summer-days-worth-of-updates/. 
  21. ↑ Morisy, Michael; Pilhofer, Aron (June 11, 2018). "MuckRock and DocumentCloud merge to build tools for a more informed society". MuckRock. https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2018/jun/11/muckrock-documentcloud-merge-announcement/. "We are thrilled to announce that DocumentCloud and MuckRock are merging." 

Sources

External links

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