Over the course of the next week, a few brave newsrooms are getting upgraded to the new DocumentCloud platform, which offers a variety of improvements from speed and search to mobile-friendly annotations. Here’s how to cut to the front of the line or ask for a delay.

On June 26, we held our first COVID Public Info training, giving journalists, researchers, and everyone else tips, tricks, and templates for using transparency laws to dig into public records. We covered ground like how to adjust your approach as governments still operate at reduced capacity, as well as called out some specific stories that used transparency to dig into key issues.

We’ve loved seeing the creative ways users have used our Assignments crowdsourcing tools, from digging through documents to building petitions. Now, to help newsrooms quickly gather answers to big questions, we’ve created an experimental spinoff of Assignments designed to help organize volunteers in gathering and label large amounts of data no matter where it may live.

Last week, we released support for “flat pages” on DocumentCloud, which we use to host documentation, about pages, and more.

This Friday, we’re hosting the first of a number of ongoing free trainings focused on uncovering how COVID-19 is impacting communities around the United States. Come join us, and subscribe to the project newsletter to get first look at key data sets, free training, and more.