US: New York Times teams with ProPublica for online document archive

Posted by Lauren Drablier on November 3, 2008 at 2:38 PM

The New York Times and ProPublica, an investigative-reporting non-profit organization, have applied to the Knight News Challenge in the hope of getting $1 million from the Foundation to launch an online archive of primary-source documents.

The project entitled, DocumentCloud, would give newspapers and journalists access to large amounts of well organized first hand sources.

According to their grant application, "documents are the foundation of investigative journalism, but today's newsroom is a throwaway culture. Too often, reporters gather reams of information, do their stories, then chuck rich source documents into a dusty corner, never again to see the light of day."

The project would allow news organizations to upload their materials for public consumption and analysis, according to Nieman Lab. DocumentCloud will run on open APIs so users can search and interact with the database. Its aim is to work as a card catalogue for primary source documents.

Source: Nieman Journalism Lab via Poynter