document sharing | Editors Blog

Tool of the week: DocumentCloud

What is it? A platform to allow you to search and analyse documents as data.

DocumentCloud works by encouraging users to upload documents, it then pushes them through the Thomson Reuters-powered OpenCalais, a “toolkit of capabilities” that can be used by news sites for semantic analysis. Document sharing is good practice that many news desks have adopted and something all journalists should consider to enable data to be shared and searchable.

How is it of use to journalists? Journalists can search for keywords and analyse documents as data.

For example, try searching for “phone hacking” and you are presented with a series of parliamentary reports, the text of speeches and letters contributed by the Guardian, New York Times, the Lens and the Telegraph.

You can then dig deeper, view the documents on a timeline and find related documents.

While this post from PromotionWorld focuses on the benefits of document-sharing for businesses (e.g. making company reports available online), there are some valid points for news organisations:

Document sharing has become a very important and crucial ingredient when it comes to the world of SEO. Sharing documents online has helped business increase their visibility in great new way.

Sharing source material using tools such as Scribd and Yudu can add to articles by giving the reader more detail about what’s involved. Additionally, as this post points out, branded widgets are often available for document-sharing embeds spreading your news group’s name across other sites.

Full post at this link…