Subject Guides: Journalism: Tools

Ongoing Journalism Projects

AllSides
Balanced news and interrogations of bias from major publications.
Attacks on the Press
Annual worldwide survey from the Committee to Protect Journalists.
The Docket
Northeastern University's justice reporting lab.
The First Amendment Center
The First Amendment Center at Northeastern University School of Journalism is a joint undertaking of the New England First Amendment Coalition and Northeastern University's School of Journalism, with assistance from the University's Center for Urban and Regional Policy (CURP). The goal of the New England First Amendment Coalition is to defend, promote and expand public access to government and the work it does.
Freedom of the Press
A worldwide index from Freedom House, an independent watchdog organization dedicated to the expansion of freedom around the world. Historical data from 1980 to current.
Nieman Journalism Lab
The Nieman Journalism Lab is an attempt to help journalism figure out its future in an Internet age. A project sponsored by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, which administers the oldest fellowship program for journalists in the world.
State of the News Media
An annual report by the Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project examining the landscape of American journalism.
Storybench: the Art and Science of Storytelling
A partnership between Northeastern University’s Media Innovation program and Esquire magazine.

Journalists' Guide to the Federal Courts
A guide for journalists, published by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, with information about accessing court documents and covering a variety of legal actions.

FOIA
The Freedom of Information Act is a law that gives you the right to access information from the federal government. Under the FOIA, agencies must disclose any information that is requested – unless that information is protected from public disclosure. The FOIA also requires that agencies automatically disclose certain information, including frequently requested records.

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Find out what documents have been released.
Find out how to make a FOIA request
Media Cloud: Tools for Online Media Analysis
Media Cloud, an open access platform, provides tools for academic researchers, journalism critics, policy advocates, media scholars, and others to examine "which media sources cover which stories, what language different media outlets use in conjunction with different stories, and how stories spread from one media outlet to another."
Sunlight Foundation
"The Sunlight Foundation is a nonpartisan nonprofit that advocates for open government globally and uses technology to make government more accountable to all." The site provides a suite of digital tools and apps to track political contributions, Congressional voting, lobbyist registrations, organizations paying for ads and much more.
Washington Information Directory.
Washington Information Directory is a one-stop source for information on U.S. governmental and nongovernmental agencies and organizations.
Access restricted to NU only.

Digital National Security Archive
The Digital National Security Archive contains a comprehensive set of declassified government documents. The resource now includes 38 collections consisting of over 94,000 indexed documents, with more than 650,000 total pages. Each of these collections covers critical world events, countries, and U.S. policy decisions from post World War II through the 21st century. Glossaries, chronologies, bibliographies, overviews, and photographs are included.
National Security Archive
Founded in 1985 by journalists and scholars to check rising government secrecy, the National Security Archive combines a unique range of functions: investigative journalism center, research institute on international affairs, library and archive of declassified U.S. documents ("the world's largest nongovernmental collection" according to the Los Angeles Times), leading non-profit user of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, public interest law firm defending and expanding public access to government information, global advocate of open government, and indexer and publisher of former secrets.
NSA Archive
ACLU archive of NSA documents released since the Edward Snowden leaks. Browse or search by keyword, etc.