DocumentCloud, the souped-up repository of primary-source material that I’ve been raving about since it first emerged in November, has a big announcement today: They’ve signed up 20 more organizations — including The Washington Post, New Yorker, MSNBC, and ACLU — to contribute documents and test the first iteration of the consortium, which is expected to [...]

Two quick thoughts I want to pull up from the comments of Michael’s post on the Guardian’s success crowdsourcing the analysis of documents in the MP expenses scandal:
— Aron Pilhofer of The New York Times (and DocumentCloud) notes the crucial role Amazon’s EC2 plays in projects like these: “Even more than a framework (we use [...]

The Knight News Challenge’s biggest winner, with a two-year grant of $719,500, is DocumentCloud, the primary-source index conceived by journalists and developers at ProPublica and The New York Times. Here’s why you should care: There’s good reason to believe the project will transform how some investigative journalism is conducted — and who conducts it.
Like a [...]

— Blog pioneer Jason Kottke writes about how the “broken windows” theory of policing applies to web sites. In other words: If you want good behavior from comments, you need to keep the place looking clean.
Much of the tone of discourse online is governed by the level of moderation and to what extent [...]

Here’s some more information about the Knight News Challenge application by ProPublica and The New York Times that generated some buzz and criticism earlier this month. They’re seeking a $1 million grant to develop an online repository of primary-source documents that anyone could contribute to or take from. I spoke at length with developers at [...]

[Saturday was the deadline for submissions for this year's Knight News Challenge. In the coming days and weeks, we'll be looking at some of the most interesting applicants. If you know of one you think worth highlighting, let us know, via email or in the comments. —Ed.]
Two of the biggest names in journalism have applied [...]