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DocumentCloud gets $250K Knight grant, will move to Temple

Thanks to a grant from the Knight Foundation, the popular journalism tool DocumentCloud will become part of the Temple University curriculum as it seeks sustainability.

A highlighted example of the type of document you might see on DocumentCloud.
A highlighted example of the type of document you might see on DocumentCloud.Read moreScreenshot via DocumentCloud

DocumentCloud is setting up shop at Temple University.

Thanks to a $250,000 grant from the Knight Foundation, the document-sharing site will try to figure out a sustainable business model while being housed at Temple's Klein College of Media and Communication, Technical.ly Philly reports.

DocumentCloud is a digital tool that allows journalists to share documents and turn their documents into data to give stories more context.

The company was co-founded by Aron Pilhofer, who worked at the New York Times and the Guardian and is now holds the James B. Steele Chair in Journalism Innovation at Temple. Other co-founders are Eric Umansky and Scott Klein of ProPublica.

Technical.ly Philly reported that DocumentCloud has been used by about 8,400 journalists from more than 1,600 outlets. Its 3.5 million-plus documents have been viewed more than 824 million times.

Pilhofer said he'll be hiring students to work on the project and DocumentCloud will be brought into the school's curriculum, with the goal being to get users to contribute enough to keep the platform going.

"We're not looking for profit but sustainability," Pilhofer told Technical.ly Philly.

The cloud-based platform had been a project of Investigative Reporters and Editors.