ATLANTA (CNN) -- A coalition of large news organizations, including CNN, has retained a nonprofit research firm to conduct an inventory of Florida's uncounted presidential ballots, Tom Johnson, chairman and CEO of the CNN News Group, said Tuesday.

"The Florida presidential election was one of the most important news stories of 2000, and we believe the story is incomplete without a deliberate and thorough examination of all the ballots," Johnson said in a news release.

The National Opinion Research Center, affiliated with the University of Chicago, will evaluate the ballots and classify the marks or lack of marks on each. The firm will not try to determine whether a ballot contains a "vote," but will only describe the marks.

The firm will look at roughly 180,000 ballots from throughout the state's 67 counties that did not register a presidential vote when they passed through machines. Those ballots includes both undervotes -- no vote for president -- and overvotes -- two or more votes for president.

Vice President Al Gore's campaign had focused on the undervotes, calling for those ballots to be counted by hand. For five weeks, Gore had challenged election results in Florida that showed George W. Bush to be the winner. He conceded after the U.S. Supreme Court closed the door on the hand counts.

Other news organizations that are part of the inventory effort include the Associated Press, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Palm Beach Post, the St. Petersburg Times and Tribune Publishing.

"We are joined in this effort by some of the most respected news organizations in the country and are pleased that an organization of the caliber of NORC is producing the database," Johnson said. "We are fully aware that this is a difficult and imperfect process and will report the results accordingly."

The database is expected to be completed within 10 weeks, and the information will be released to the public within days of its completion.

The center will train teams of three independent coders to classify each ballot based on the varying interpretations local canvassing boards have confronted in Florida in their efforts to count those ballots.

In the news release, CNN predicted the project would produce "the definitive historical archive of uncounted Florida votes."