Using DocumentCloud
A guide for reporters
Jaimi Dowdell, IRE/NICAR
More than 500 news organizations around the world have a DocumentCloud account. Newsrooms large and small use it to collaborate and manage document sets used in the reporting process. It makes it easy for journalists to show readers what they're reporting on, rather than just telling them. This free, online tool can also help us dig in on stories. You can see how other journalists have used DocumentCloud on our featured reporting page.
The DocumentCloud homepage
You can find us at documentcloud.org. On the homepage, you have access to help, search options and the logon.
Getting started
Accounts are given to newsrooms and not individuals. To get your newsroom an account, simply email:
info@documentcloud.org
If you already have an account, simply sign in on the homepage as shown above.
Uploading a document
Along the left-hand side, you’ll notice options to select documents. They include: All Documents – this will list all public documents currently stored in our repository Your Documents – this will only show documents you’ve uploaded
Your Published Documents – Anything you publish (make public) will show up here
Your newsroom’s documents – I’m part of the IRE group, so this would show all of our organization’s documents.
Notice as you click on various options that the search bar changes to reflect which group you’ve clicked on. This will also change the universe of documents you search.
Just below that, you can add documents or projects:
By default, documents are private. In the “Edit details” window, you can change this. (You can edit document details after you’ve uploaded files as well. Just look for the “Edit Document Information” icon next to the document’s name in your workspace.)
Once you’re ready, simply click “Upload” to add your file to your account. Uploads typically don’t take too long, but if there is a large number of files concurrently processing, it could slow things down a bit.
After you’ve added a document, you should see it in your workspace. To open it, double click on it.
Document tools
One of the things I find most useful about DocumentCloud is the ability to add notes to documents. After you’ve opened a document, you’ll see the document and then to the right you’ll see a rail with the document description and some tools.
To add notes or redact, you first must click on the tool you want to use. Then you highlight the portion of the document you want to work with. Once you’ve highlighted the section, a window will open. Use this window to title your note and add details.
Notice in the document viewer that there are tabs along the upper left. These tabs allow you to move through different views of your document. “Document” shows the file exactly as it was when uploaded; “Pages” will show the various pages of your document; “Notes” will show all of the notes, public or private that you’ve made and “Text” is a plain text version of your document that DocumentCloud has created. This plain text is what allows documents to be searchable. Moving throughout your document with these tabs can save you time in your work.
Analyze documents
To analyze a document simply go to your workspace. And click on a document (or don’t if you’d like to analyze all of them).
Look under the “Analyze” tab to see your options: You can view entities or a timeline and share the document.
View Entities will give you a list of organizations, people, addresses, dates, terms, phone numbers, and more –
essentially things that DocumentCloud sees and extracts from your document. You can click on any of the entities and DocumentCloud will take you directly to where the entity can be found within the document.
The timeline takes extracted dates and plots them on a timeline such as this:
View the timeline as a whole, or use your cursor to drag in on specific time periods to hone in on events. You can click on any of these dotes to pop you into the document(s) where the date was mentioned.
Searching across documents
For example, in the figure below, I’m searching all of IRE’s documents for the word “Columbia.”
Collaboration
Sometimes you’re going to want more than one person work with you on a set of documents. In this case, you’ll want to use the collaboration feature. To add a collaborator, you’ll first need to create a project. Use the “New Project” button on the left side of your workspace to do that. Give your project a name. You can then click and drag documents from your workspace into the project.
To add a collaborator, click on the “Edit project” icon next to the project name. Then select “Add collaborator.” You can add anyone to this group so long as they have a DocumentCloud account. Please note that you must use the email that the person uses to log on to DocumentCloud. Each collaborator will then have access to the documents within that project even if the documents are private.
Publish documents
From there, you can go to the “Publish” menu and select “Publication date.” This allows you to set a specific time for the information to go live or you can publish it immediately.
