Upon finishing a story, reporters once stowed away their source documents in a desk or filing cabinet. But today, reporters and news organizations increasingly put their primary sources online, to engage users with the facts and data behind the story.

At the Argentine daily La Nación, a team of data journalists is using DocumentCloud, an open-source project that hosts thousands of primary source documents from newsrooms.

Many journalists wonder how they can evaluate the impact of an investigation or a blog post. Here are some simple techniques to use:

1) Use Google advanced search:

• Place the permanent URL for the content you wish to monitor in the second text box
• Do the same with the title
• Repeat the same step for the subtitle or the short summary of the article.

In all cases, use the "narrow your results" tool to analyze the results for the last 24 hours.

During her year-long partnership at La Nación, one of the most important newspapers in Argentina, Knight International Journalism Fellow Sandra Crucianelli helped take data journalism to the next level. In a country that lacks open data and easy access to public information, she assembled a flexible team at the paper that combined best journalism practices with data visualization and savvy marketing techniques to tell better stories.

Knight International Journalism Fellow Justin Arenstein works with the African Media Initiative to, among other things, encourage the use of data in reporting. He speaks about his work and the importance of open data and NGOs on La Nacion’s data blog.

Five Knight International Journalism Fellows participated in the Mediathon in Buenos Aires from August 30 – September 1st. The three-day event included two days of workshops.

Finding the information you need on the web can be challenging enough. But most journalists have no idea how to then extract or export that information in a way that they can use. Knight International Journalism Fellow Sandra Crucianelli is working to change all that. As part of her fellowship, Crucianelli is creating tools to help Argentine reporters collect, analyze and visualize data for investigative stories.