DocumentCloud is an open-source

software as a service Software as a service (SaaS ) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is also known as "on-demand software" and Web-based/Web-hosted software. SaaS is co ...

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 August 2015, DocumentCloud users had uploaded more than 2 million documents containing 27 million pages. Many of them are accessible via
public search portal
DocumentCloud’s development has led to the creation of several notable open-source projects, including

Backbone.js Backbone.js is a JavaScript rich-client web app framework based on the model–view–controller design paradigm, intended to connect to an API over a RESTful JSON interface. Backbone is known for being lightweight, as its only hard dependency i ...

, Jammit and

Underscore.js Underscore.js is a JavaScript library which provides utility functions for common programming tasks. It is comparable to features provided by Prototype.js and the Ruby language, but opts for a functional programming design instead of extending o ...

. The majority of funding for DocumentCloud has come from grants by the

Knight Foundation The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, also known as the Knight Foundation, is an American non-profit foundation that provides grants for journalism, communities, and the arts. The organization was founded as the Knight Memorial Education ...

History

In 2009, journalists Scott Klein and Eric Umansky of

ProPublica ProPublica (), legally Pro Publica, Inc., is a nonprofit organization based in New York City. In 2010, it became the first online news source to win a Pulitzer Prize, for a piece written by one of its journalists''The Guardian'', April 13, 2010P ...

and Aron Pilhofer of

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

received a Knight News Challenge grant for initial development of the platform. 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 Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...

and the

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...

had signed on as beta testers. A public beta was announced at the 2010 NICAR conference of

Investigative Reporters and Editors Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. (IRE) is a nonprofit organization that focuses on improving the quality of journalism, in particular investigative journalism. Formed in 1975, it presents the IRE Awards and holds conferences and training ...

, and within a year contributing news organizations had uploaded 1 million pages. In 2011, DocumentCloud received a second Knight News Challenge grant, dissolved its own nonprofit entity, and merged with the nonprofit Investigative Reporters and Editors. 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. Since its start, DocumentCloud accounts have been free to journalism organizations, but the organization has announced it will be implementing a pay model. On June 11, 2018, DocumentCloud and

MuckRock MuckRock is a United States-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization which assists anyone in filing governmental requests for information through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and other public record laws around the United States, then pub ...

announced they would be merging.

Open-source projects

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

Underscore.js

Jammit

PDFShaver

CloudCrowd

Docsplit

References

Sources

DocumentCloud's potential outside of Journalism
ProfHacker blog in ''The Chronicle of Higher Education''
Sunlight Foundation Introduction to DocumentCloud

Interview with DocumentCloud co-founder Aron Pilhofer by the Online Journalism Review

Neiman Lab's encyclopedia entry for DocumentCloud

External links

* * {{Twitter Cloud storage JavaScript libraries Internet properties established in 2009 File sharing communities