In a new story with DataJournalism.com, reporters Dillon Bergin and Betsy Ladyzhets shared how MuckRock collaborates with both experts and other reporters to pursue major data journalism projects.

In the late 1980s, an area of the Jurupa Valley in Riverside, California began a transformation that would turn it from a community of sprawling dairy farms to hub for enormous warehouses. David Danelski, then an investigative reporter for the Riverside-Press Enterprise, unraveled the details through public records on town planning and found one important document missing from projects approved by county officials for more than a decade: the environmental impact statement. Here are his tips on this and other key records requests you can file.

Freelance journalist Monica Vaughan was reporting on air pollution in California’s San Joaquin Valley when the words of one mother changed her perspective. “I just scan the stories looking for the sentence about whether or not it’s safe to live here. And I can never find that,” Vaughan remembered the woman saying.

In a second guide on air pollution, we bring together advice from reporters like Vaughan and examples that might help you uncover unsafe air in your community. From intial complaints to sustained violations, we give you the tools to ask your local government how it regulates polluters in your area

In 2004, Dina Cappiello discovered some Houston residents were exposed to cancer-causing toxins at a level 20 times higher than federal guidelines — for toxic waste dumps. “Everybody was like ‘nothing to see here,’ but I was like something doesn’t add up,” Cappiello said. In this guide, we share tips and examples from Cappiello and other reporters of what you can request in your community to understand how dangerous the air is and even pinpoint potential polluters.

En los últimos seis meses de nuestra colaboración con LSE, testeamos diferentes herramientas y técnicas para construir una plataforma que ayude a los periodistas de investigación a comprender y procesar documentos poco estructurados y obtener conocimientos útiles.

Alguna vez ¿has tenido una pila de documentos y has querido comenzar a concentrarte rápidamente en una parte determinada de material? ¿Te gustaría contar con ayuda para trabajar solamente en los contratos, o quizás, los informes policiales que detallan un determinado tipo de encuentro, o bien, poder dividir rápidamente las cartas de respaldo de aquellas negativas dirigidas a un político sobre un tema clave?

El acceso a la información pública tiene un rol fundamental en la exigibilidad de otros derechos y es una de las herramientas principales que la sociedad civil requiere para controlar e influir en los gobiernos.

La Nacion, CLIP, Ojo Público, and MuckRock collaborated together to explore how machine learning could help fuel more effective ways for journalists, researchers, and the public to keep an eye on large government document sets. Here’s what we learned and how you can build on that work.