We’re excited to announce that DocumentCloud and MuckRock are part of the next round of the Community Listening and Engagement Fund (CLEF). Newsrooms around the country can apply for a subsidy to use our filing, tracking, and analysis tools while developing new ways to involve readers in the reporting process.

Since the beginning, MuckRock’s goal has gone beyond making filing FOIA and public records requests easier: we also wanted to help the public better understand this process and to find new ways for reporters and newsrooms to tap their communities for important documents, key questions, and revealing stories.

The vision of CLEF aligns perfectly with that.

“Incorporating these tools into local newsrooms offers novel methods of community listening and engagement,” said Democracy Fund’s Paul Waters. “This is the foundation of trust in news.”

After an open application process, CLEF will select about 20 newsrooms to receive subsidies of between 25% and 75% of the cost of organizational accounts. These subsidies will offer full access to all of DocumentCloud and MuckRock’s power features, including a share request filing pool, the Assignments crowdsourcing tool, and enhanced collaboration and sharing features across both sites.

In addition to DocumentCloud and MuckRock, CLEF is also offering separate grants to get newsrooms up and running with Coral Project’s Talk and the Listening Post Collective.

Creative users have long used both MuckRock and DocumentCloud in a variety of ways to build trust and engage readers:

• By showcasing primary documents right alongside reporting, so readers know what backs up assertions.
• Through launching national surveys on key public policy issues and making it easy for readers to request information about their communities.
• Experimenting with new ways to explore primary documents in context.
• By asking readers to help crowdsource and analyze large documents troves.

We’re excited to work with CLEF newsrooms to find even more ways to use our tools to build trust with your readers, break important stories, and keep communities around the country informed.

You can read more about the program here and apply to receive the funding here.