Ever had a spreadsheet-turned-PDF you’re stuck untangling? Wish story ideas came right to you? Over the past two years, MuckRock’s DocumentCloud tool has built several ways to automate common journalism and research tasks, taking once-cumbersome processes and breaking them down to just a few clicks.

Brazilian newsroom Aos Fatos shows how they used DocumentCloud to pull images, audio files and videos from social media accounts.

This week’s For the Record tackles proposed state legislation in Colorado and Kentucky that would change how public records are accessed.

MuckRock has won the First Amendment Coalition’s Free Speech and Open Government Award for its data journalism collaborations and was named a finalist for the National Institute for Health Care Management Awards and Sigma Awards.

Sunshine Week shines a light on the importance of public records and open government.

In the last two weeks the MuckRock team released the ability to pin your projects on DocumentCloud, the ability to update your card on file without making a new purchase and several Add-On improvements including two new Add-Ons: OCR Scheduler and Page Counter.

At NICAR 2024, University of Texas students demonstrated their use of DocumentCloud to compile local campaign finance reports, overcoming challenges with the use of enhanced OCR and categorizing their documents with tagging.

Some state and federal laws require what are called “demand letters,” or notices of legal action, to be sent from one party to another before a lawsuit is filed.

See what you might have missed from this year’s NICAR conference.

We’re taught in school about checks and balances between the various branches of government, but those lessons tend to leave out the role that civilians play in holding officials accountable. We’re not just talking about the ballot box, but the everyday power we all have to demand government agencies make their records and data available to public scrutiny.

Decades after the first-ever U.S. nuclear weapons test in July 1945, the extent of the fallout has only now been understood, thanks to new modeled data by researchers. States Newsroom and MuckRock explore the human fallout from America’s nuclear testing program, and how the consequences are still felt today.

A case in Cape Girardeau County, where the coroner is charged with stealing from the dead and lying on death certificates, is spurring action to strengthen qualifications for public officials who handle deaths.

Major news organizations have announced the shutdown of prominent websites, including the DCist, Vice and The Messenger with many left wondering who will archive the journalism of hundreds of reporters.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is drilling through basement floors in the Cades Cove subdivision of Florissant to determine whether there is radioactive contamination under residents’ homes.