Tools#
These are tools (or lists of tools) that have been built for journalism (rather than those that are useful for journalists or for technologists).
Aleph (OCCRP) | “Access to a vast archive of government records and open databases”
Baker tool for publishing stories, LA Times
BBC News Labs & repo | Tools built by the BBC’s innovation lab
Bellingcat OSINT tools | Tools developed by or for Bellingcat for Open source investigations
Blacklight (The Markup) & repo | Real-time website privacy inspector based in part on OpenWPM (see below)
Casefinder (Caerphilly observer) | Search planning for Magistrates’ Courts
Censusreporter (US) | Analyse the US census
Code for democracy analysis tool | Browser-based tool for analysing US politics
Coverdrop | Lets whistleblowers contact news groups safely
CrowData Turn pdfs into datasets
Dangerzone: sanitize documents
DataKit (AP) | Command line tool for managing news projects
Datasette & YouTube talk | Publish your data using this powerful framework
Datashare (ICIJ) | Analyse, search, filter & sort documents
Django-collaborative (Propublica) | Web app for building stories on tipoffs from the public
Document Cloud | ‘Turn documents into data’
FOI: send en masse (not tested)
Frameworks developed in US newsrooms
Geocoder (batch) for journalists | “Locations to coordinates at rocket speed”
Giant | Lets journalists ‘search, analyse, categorise and share unstructured data’
Globaleaks | Whistleblowing submission system
Google Journalist Studio | Google tools for reporting, including Pinpoint for mass analysis of documents
Harassment manager (Jigsaw-Google)
Harvester (AP) & presentation & repo & talk | Newsroom platform for collecting data
Knight Lab | Tools from the Knight Lab at Northwestern University
MapChecking | Crowd size estimator
Mother Jones toolbox | List of tools for producing journalism
NY Times markup language ‘Archie’ | Write & edit structured text to render in web pages or interactive graphics
OpenSpending | Search and analyse fiscal data that is public
OpenWPM | Measure privacy levels on websites
Overview | Search, visualise and review up to hundreds of thousands of documents
PANDA Project | Newsroom data journalism platform
ProPublica news apps | Tools and apps from Propublica
Propublica: investigating non-profits (US)
Reportermate | Generate copy from .csv file
Securedrop | Whistleblowing submission system
Transcription (Guardian) | Transcription service
Typerighter (Guardian) | Checks if a text respects the Style Guide
Twick (Buzzfeed) | Command line tool to fetch & store tweets from a search query (API authentication)
YouTube Tracking | Monitor and collect personalised recommendations to investigate YouTube’s recommender system.
WebXray | Analyse sites for trackers and cookies