Release Notes: Knight Election Hub, more OCR tools and expanded raw email access

Over the past few weeks, the MuckRock tech team has focused on several key updates and additions. These include the development of the Knight Election Hub, which offers vital resources to U.S. newsrooms for comprehensive coverage of the 2024 elections.

Additionally, we have enhanced DocumentCloud with a new Textract OCR Add-On, along with introducing an OCR Scheduler Add-On for batch processing efficiency. On MuckRock, users with edit access on a request can now see the raw email for communications posted to a request, allowing for easier tracking of communications on larger teams.

Please share your experiences with us. If any of the MuckRock tools, including DocumentCloud and DocumentCloud Add-Ons, have enhanced your research or reporting processes, we’d love to hear from you. Drop us a line at info@muckrock.com with your feedback and stories.

Your input helps us improve our tools for everyone’s benefit.

Also, you can read through past Release Notes for updates on features you might have missed, or sign up for MuckRock’s newsletter to get updates delivered to you weekly.

Knight Election Hub

The Knight Election Hub, developed in collaboration with MuckRock, OpenNews, Newspack and Hearken, offers free resources to U.S. newsrooms covering the 2024 elections at all levels. It provides crucial tools like data, software, training, and expert connections to support comprehensive election reporting. By facilitating access to these resources, the Hub aims to enhance the quality and depth of election coverage, ensuring that newsrooms can effectively inform their audiences and uphold the integrity of the democratic process.

Newsrooms covering the 2024 elections who meet our eligibility criteria can get access. All you’ll need is a newsroom MuckRock account. If you already have one, you’re in. If you don’t have a log in yet, create an account for free.

DocumentCloud

Textract OCR Add-On

In addition to our existing OCR Add-Ons including Azure Document Intelligence, Google Cloud Vision, docTR and OCRSpace the DocumentCloud team has added the ability to run Amazon’s Textract OCR via an Add-On as well. In contrast to using the built in interface to run Textract, the Add-On enables you to auto-tag documents to signify that they are OCR’d with the Textract OCR engine with the Add-On. This way, you can filter for which documents have already been OCR’d and which have not.

Additionally, you can use our OCR Scheduler Add-On to run Textract on large batches of documents instead of having to apply it on 25 documents at a time. The Add-On will apply the OCR engine gradually on your large document set on a scheduled basis, automating another part of your workflow. For an in-depth guide on OCR tools and more, read our comprehensive OCR tool review posted in October.

MuckRock

Collaborators on MuckRock requests who have edit access can now see raw emails for requests. Previously, only the owner of a request could see this. This allows for collaborators who share edit access on requests to more easily track communications on requests.