Latest news with #FieldNotes
Egypt Independent
3 days ago
- Egypt Independent
How AI is being used by police departments to help draft reports
Fort Collins, Colorado — In his nine years at the Fort Collins, Colorado, police department, Officer Scott Brittingham says he has taken a lot of pride in the process of writing reports after each call for service. But when the department decided to test a tool to speed things up, he was intrigued. Now, a report that might have previously taken him 45 minutes to write takes just 10 minutes. 'I was a little bit skeptical, I'm not a big technology person,' Brittingham said in a March interview at the Fort Collins police station for CNN's Terms of Service podcast. But spending less time writing reports means Brittingham can 'take more calls for service' and 'be proactive in preventing crime,' he said. Brittingham is referring to Draft One, artificial intelligence-powered software that creates the first draft of police reports, aiming to make the process faster and easier. And his experience may increasingly become the norm for police officers as departments across the country adopt the tool. It's gaining traction even as some legal experts and civil rights advocates raise concerns that AI-drafted police reports could contain biases or inaccuracies, as well as presenting potential transparency issues. Axon — the law enforcement tech company behind the tool that also makes tasers and body cameras — said Draft One has been its fastest growing product since it launched last year. And Axon isn't the only player in this industry; law enforcement tech company Truleo makes a similar AI police report tool called Field Notes. Police reports sit at the heart of the criminal justice process — officers use them to detail an incident and explain why they took the actions they did, and may later use them to prepare if they have to testify in court. Reports can also inform prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges and the public about the officer's perspective on what took place. They can influence whether a prosecutor decides to take a case, or whether a judge decides to hold someone without bond, said Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, an American University law professor who studies the intersection of technology and policing. 'Police reports are really an accountability mechanism,' Ferguson said. 'It's a justification for state power, for police power.' For that reason, proponents of Draft One tout the potential for AI to make reports more accurate and comprehensive, in addition to its time-saving benefits. But skeptics worry that any issues with the technology could have major ramifications for people's lives. At least one state has already passed a law regulating the use of AI-drafted police reports. Draft One's rollout also comes amid broader concerns around AI in law enforcement, after experiments elsewhere with facial recognition technology have led to wrongful arrests. 'I do think it's a growing movement. Like lots of AI, people are looking at how do we update? How do we improve?' Ferguson said of AI police report technology. 'There's a hype level, too, that people are pushing this because there's money to be made on the technology.' An efficiency tool for officers After an officer records an interaction on their body camera, they can request that Draft One create a report. The tool uses the transcript from the body camera footage to create the draft, which begins to appear within seconds of the request. The officer is then prompted to review the draft and fill in additional details before submitting it as final. Each draft report contains bracketed fill-in-the-blanks that an officer must either complete or delete before it can be submitted. The blank portions are designed to ensure officers read through the drafts to correct potential errors or add missing information. 'It really does have to be the officer's own report at the end of the day, and they have to sign off as to what happened,' Axon President Josh Isner told CNN. Draft One uses a modified version of OpenAI's ChatGPT, which Axon further tested and trained to reduce the likelihood of 'hallucinations,' factual errors that AI systems can randomly generate. Axon also says it works with a group of third-party academics, restorative justice advocates and community leaders that provide feedback on how to responsibly develop its technology and mitigate potential biases. Draft One, an AI software that creates police reports from body cam audio, is demonstrated on a screen at OKCPD headquarters on Friday, May 31, 2024 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Nick Oxford/AP The idea for Draft One came from staffing shortages that Axon's police department clients were facing, Isner said. In a 2024 survey of more than 1,000 US police agencies, the International Association of Chiefs of Police found that agencies were operating at least 10% below their authorized staffing levels on average. 'The biggest problem in public safety right now is hiring. You cannot hire enough police officers,' Isner said. 'Anything a police department can adopt to make them more efficient is kind of the name of the game right now.' Axon declined to say how many departments currently use Draft One, but police have also adopted it in Lafayette, Indiana; Tampa, Florida; and Campbell, California. And given that 'almost every single department' in the United States uses at least one Axon product, according to Isner, the growth potential for the product appears high. In Fort Collins, Technology Sergeant Bob Younger decided to test Draft One last summer after seeing a demo of the tool. 'I was blown away at the quality of the report, the accuracy of the report and how fast it happened,' he said. 'I thought to myself, 'This is an opportunity that we cannot let go.'' The department initially made the technology available to around 70 officers; now all officers have access. Younger estimates the tool has reduced the time officers spend writing reports by nearly 70%, 'and that's time we can give back to our citizens,' he said. 'Radical transparency is best' Isner said he's received largely positive feedback from prosecutors about Draft One. But last September, the prosecutor's office in King County, Washington, said it would not accept police reports drafted with the help of AI after local law enforcement agencies expressed interest in using Draft One. The office said using the tool would 'likely result in many of your officers approving Axon drafted narratives with unintentional errors in them,' in an email to police chiefs. An Axon spokesperson said that the company is 'committed to continuous collaboration with police agencies, prosecutors, defense attorneys, community advocates, and other stakeholders to gather input and guide the responsible evolution of Draft One.' They added that the AI model underlying Draft One is 'calibrated … to minimize speculation or embellishments.' But King County prosecutors aren't the only ones concerned about errors or biases in AI-drafted police reports. 'When you see this brand new technology being inserted in some ways into the heart of the criminal justice system, which is already rife with injustice and bias and so forth, it's definitely something that we sit bolt upright and take a close look at,' said Jay Stanley, a policy analyst with the ACLU Speech Privacy and Technology Project, who published a report last year recommending against using Draft One. Even Ferguson, who believes the technology will likely become the norm in policing, said he worries about mistakes in transcripts of body camera footage impacting reports. 'The transcript that you get, which becomes a police report, might be filled with misunderstandings, because the algorithm didn't understand, like, a southern accent or a different kind of accent,' Ferguson said. He also added that nonverbal cues — for example, if a person nodded rather than saying 'yes' out loud — might not be reflected. Axon tries to prevent errors or missing details with those automatic blank fields. However, in a demo at the Fort Collins Police Department, CNN observed that it is possible to delete all of the prompts and submit a report without making any changes. And once a report is submitted as final, the original, AI-generated draft isn't saved, so it's not possible to see what an officer did or didn't change. Axon says that's meant to mimic the old-school process where, even if an officer was writing by hand, their drafts wouldn't be saved along with their final report. The company also offers an opt-in setting that lets police departments require a certain percentage of the report be edited before the draft is submitted. And then there's the question of transparency, and whether a defendant might know the police report in their case was drafted by AI. Final reports created with Draft One include a customizable disclaimer by default, noting that they were written with the help of AI, but departments can turn that feature off. The Fort Collins Police Department does not include disclaimers, but officers are incentivized to make reports their own and ensure their accuracy, Younger said. 'What an officer is worried about is being critiqued or held responsible for an error or doing something and being inaccurate,' he said. 'Officers are super hyper-focused on the quality and quantity of their work.' But Ferguson said he believes 'radical transparency is the best practice.' In Utah, state lawmakers passed a law earlier this year that requires police departments to include that disclaimer on final reports that were drafted by AI. Ultimately, like so many other applications of AI, Draft One is a tool that relies on responsible, well-meaning users. 'My overall impression is that it's a tool like anything else,' Brittingham said. 'It's not the fix. It's not replacing us writing reports. It's just a tool to help us with writing reports.'
CNN
4 days ago
- CNN
How AI is being used by police departments to help draft reports
In his nine years at the Fort Collins, Colorado, police department, Officer Scott Brittingham says he has taken a lot of pride in the process of writing reports after each call for service. But when the department decided to test a tool to speed things up, he was intrigued. Now, a report that might have previously taken him 45 minutes to write takes just 10 minutes. 'I was a little bit skeptical, I'm not a big technology person,' Brittingham said in a March interview at the Fort Collins police station for CNN's Terms of Service podcast. But spending less time writing reports means Brittingham can 'take more calls for service' and 'be proactive in preventing crime,' he said. Brittingham is referring to Draft One, artificial intelligence-powered software that creates the first draft of police reports, aiming to make the process faster and easier. And his experience may increasingly become the norm for police officers as departments across the country adopt the tool. It's gaining traction even as some legal experts and civil rights advocates raise concerns that AI-drafted police reports could contain biases or inaccuracies, as well as presenting potential transparency issues. Axon — the law enforcement tech company behind the tool that also makes tasers and body cameras — said Draft One has been its fastest growing product since it launched last year. And Axon isn't the only player in this industry; law enforcement tech company Truleo makes a similar AI police report tool called Field Notes. Police reports sit at the heart of the criminal justice process — officers use them to detail an incident and explain why they took the actions they did, and may later use them to prepare if they have to testify in court. Reports can also inform prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges and the public about the officer's perspective on what took place. They can influence whether a prosecutor decides to take a case, or whether a judge decides to hold someone without bond, said Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, an American University law professor who studies the intersection of technology and policing. 'Police reports are really an accountability mechanism,' Ferguson said. 'It's a justification for state power, for police power.' For that reason, proponents of Draft One tout the potential for AI to make reports more accurate and comprehensive, in addition to its time-saving benefits. But skeptics worry that any issues with the technology could have major ramifications for people's lives. At least one state has already passed a law regulating the use of AI-drafted police reports. Draft One's rollout also comes amid broader concerns around AI in law enforcement, after experiments elsewhere with facial recognition technology have led to wrongful arrests. 'I do think it's a growing movement. Like lots of AI, people are looking at how do we update? How do we improve?' Ferguson said of AI police report technology. 'There's a hype level, too, that people are pushing this because there's money to be made on the technology.' After an officer records an interaction on their body camera, they can request that Draft One create a report. The tool uses the transcript from the body camera footage to create the draft, which begins to appear within seconds of the request. The officer is then prompted to review the draft and fill in additional details before submitting it as final. Each draft report contains bracketed fill-in-the-blanks that an officer must either complete or delete before it can be submitted. The blank portions are designed to ensure officers read through the drafts to correct potential errors or add missing information. 'It really does have to be the officer's own report at the end of the day, and they have to sign off as to what happened,' Axon President Josh Isner told CNN. Draft One uses a modified version of OpenAI's ChatGPT, which Axon further tested and trained to reduce the likelihood of 'hallucinations,' factual errors that AI systems can randomly generate. Axon also says it works with a group of third-party academics, restorative justice advocates and community leaders that provide feedback on how to responsibly develop its technology and mitigate potential biases. The idea for Draft One came from staffing shortages that Axon's police department clients were facing, Isner said. In a 2024 survey of more than 1,000 US police agencies, the International Association of Chiefs of Police found that agencies were operating at least 10% below their authorized staffing levels on average. 'The biggest problem in public safety right now is hiring. You cannot hire enough police officers,' Isner said. 'Anything a police department can adopt to make them more efficient is kind of the name of the game right now.' Axon declined to say how many departments currently use Draft One, but police have also adopted it in Lafayette, Indiana; Tampa, Florida; and Campbell, California. And given that 'almost every single department' in the United States uses at least one Axon product, according to Isner, the growth potential for the product appears high. In Fort Collins, Technology Sergeant Bob Younger decided to test Draft One last summer after seeing a demo of the tool. 'I was blown away at the quality of the report, the accuracy of the report and how fast it happened,' he said. 'I thought to myself, 'This is an opportunity that we cannot let go.'' The department initially made the technology available to around 70 officers; now all officers have access. Younger estimates the tool has reduced the time officers spend writing reports by nearly 70%, 'and that's time we can give back to our citizens,' he said. Isner said he's received largely positive feedback from prosecutors about Draft One. But last September, the prosecutor's office in King County, Washington, said it would not accept police reports drafted with the help of AI after local law enforcement agencies expressed interest in using Draft One. The office said using the tool would 'likely result in many of your officers approving Axon drafted narratives with unintentional errors in them,' in an email to police chiefs. An Axon spokesperson said that the company is 'committed to continuous collaboration with police agencies, prosecutors, defense attorneys, community advocates, and other stakeholders to gather input and guide the responsible evolution of Draft One.' They added that the AI model underlying Draft One is 'calibrated … to minimize speculation or embellishments.' But King County prosecutors aren't the only ones concerned about errors or biases in AI-drafted police reports. 'When you see this brand new technology being inserted in some ways into the heart of the criminal justice system, which is already rife with injustice and bias and so forth, it's definitely something that we sit bolt upright and take a close look at,' said Jay Stanley, a policy analyst with the ACLU Speech Privacy and Technology Project, who published a report last year recommending against using Draft One. Even Ferguson, who believes the technology will likely become the norm in policing, said he worries about mistakes in transcripts of body camera footage impacting reports. 'The transcript that you get, which becomes a police report, might be filled with misunderstandings, because the algorithm didn't understand, like, a southern accent or a different kind of accent,' Ferguson said. He also added that nonverbal cues — for example, if a person nodded rather than saying 'yes' out loud — might not be reflected. Axon tries to prevent errors or missing details with those automatic blank fields. However, in a demo at the Fort Collins Police Department, CNN observed that it is possible to delete all of the prompts and submit a report without making any changes. And once a report is submitted as final, the original, AI-generated draft isn't saved, so it's not possible to see what an officer did or didn't change. Axon says that's meant to mimic the old-school process where, even if an officer was writing by hand, their drafts wouldn't be saved along with their final report. The company also offers an opt-in setting that lets police departments require a certain percentage of the report be edited before the draft is submitted. And then there's the question of transparency, and whether a defendant might know the police report in their case was drafted by AI. Final reports created with Draft One include a customizable disclaimer by default, noting that they were written with the help of AI, but departments can turn that feature off. The Fort Collins Police Department does not include disclaimers, but officers are incentivized to make reports their own and ensure their accuracy, Younger said. 'What an officer is worried about is being critiqued or held responsible for an error or doing something and being inaccurate,' he said. 'Officers are super hyper-focused on the quality and quantity of their work.' But Ferguson said he believes 'radical transparency is the best practice.' In Utah, state lawmakers passed a law earlier this year that requires police departments to include that disclaimer on final reports that were drafted by AI. Ultimately, like so many other applications of AI, Draft One is a tool that relies on responsible, well-meaning users. 'My overall impression is that it's a tool like anything else,' Brittingham said. 'It's not the fix. It's not replacing us writing reports. It's just a tool to help us with writing reports.'
Fast Company
17-06-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
How Field Notes went from side project to cult notebook
Field Notes cofounders Aaron Draplin and Jim Coudal have convened to ostensibly talk about their cult-fave memo book brand. But Draplin—the gregarious, hilarious Portland proprietor of Draplin Design Co.—just wrapped up jury duty. And almost 10 minutes into our conversation, he's regaling us with courtroom sketches he made during the trial. ('Of course, I had to figure out some way to exploit it for creative purposes.') Such freewheeling is just part and parcel of knowing Draplin, but Coudal has a knack for seamlessly and seemingly effortlessly steering the conversation back to the subject at hand. It underscores a point: Without Draplin, there would be no Field Notes. And without Coudal, there would definitely be no Field Notes. 'What Jim brought to the table is that he had the light bulb where he saw what this thing could be,' Draplin says. 'Jim's, like, reputable and stuff. People always say, well, you're half of the thing—yeah, but I would have killed it because I might have gone to the next goofy little thing.' Today, 20 years and more than 10 million sold notebooks later, what began as a casual side project with no real expectation has yielded a cult product that is in 2,000 stores worldwide, has a robust direct-to-consumer membership program, and, Coudal says, just came off its best year for sales and revenue. And 2025 is on pace, he adds, with hopes to surpass it. It all goes back to Coudal's light bulb—and, of course, Draplin's before it. He had been drawing all his life and learned bookmaking at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. When Draplin left the Midwest for the West Coast in 1993, he began collecting memo books that agriculture companies historically gave out as promos, and was taken with their lineage and practical design. He decided to make some of his own notebooks in 2005, and the pragmatism and charm of those promos—the vernacular type treatments, layouts, voice—found their way into Field Notes' DNA. He hand-printed 200 notebooks on a desktop Gocco and later invested $2,000 into a first run of 2,000 notebooks with 'FIELD NOTES' printed on the cover in Futura. His goal? To give them out to friends. And one of those friends along the way happened to be Coudal, of Coudal Partners, the measured mind to Draplin's mad scientist. 'He just said, 'There's something here,'' Draplin recalls. Coudal's team made a website. On the day it went live, they made 13 modest sales via PayPal. But that was okay—again, he and Draplin both had their own gigs, and Coudal says Field Notes wasn't a priority for either of them. But, 'Before you know it, there's media attention . . . and we're seeing real numbers,' Draplin says. According to Coudal: 'One by one we fired all our clients because this Field Notes thing was getting bigger and taking up more of our time—and it was a lot more fun than making work we were proud of for people we didn't particularly like.' THE FIELD NOTES FORMULA When the pair formally launched the brand, Coudal says projects at his studio had three mandates: They had to make money, as the team had mortgages and kids to put through school; they had to be something the team would be proud of; and they had to be able to learn something new from it. Field Notes checked the boxes. Draplin's goals were more straightforward. He says he was making a buck for every grand the agency he worked for did. The mid-aughts were the dawn of the modern 'maker' movement, and there was an opportunity to craft your own future. He did just that with a concrete design system for the brand's signature notebooks from the get-go. 'There's never been a piece of type on any Field Notes material that wasn't Futura or Century Schoolbook, two beautiful, hardworking American fonts,' Coudal says. Other assets like the highly structured copy on the inside covers, as well as the logo placement on the front, were likewise sacrosanct. 'We can do different printing techniques, and we can do different-size notebooks, and we do a lot of things. But we don't mess with what made Field Notes Field Notes.' They sold the 3.5-by-5.5-inch 48-page books in packs of three, and the business grew slowly—but steadily. And as it grew, Coudal says, it became easier: The more notebooks you make, the cheaper each one becomes because you're buying in bulk. When they began scaling up their print runs, they were able to get the price down to a couple dollars per book, and sell the three-packs for $13 to 15—which got them into stores. (Today, you can find them everywhere from indies to Barnes & Noble.) One critical moment came in February 2010, when J. Crew featured Field Notes in its catalog, alongside the retailer's other 'personal favorites from our design heroes.' There was a Timex watch, Ray-Bans, Sperry shoes—'and out of fucking nowhere, Field Notes,' Coudal says. 'And when that happened, a lot changed for us.' Coudal says it gave the brand instant credibility—after all, if it was good enough for J. Crew, it was good enough for your store. In time, friends began sending him screenshots of Field Notes in TV shows; he and Draplin would see people jotting notes in them in bars and elsewhere; on the design web, they became an obsession. By 2014, there was even a subreddit dedicated to them titled 'FieldNuts.' Meanwhile, Draplin dropped into a New York store where the notebooks were arranged 'amongst $600 sweaters and $800 jeans.' And the proprietor told him he could be selling the notebooks for $29.95 or $40—which is something he would not do. advertisement 'That's my favorite part—this stuff is accessible, right?' Draplin notes. In 2009, Field Notes launched a set of color variants, and does a new installment every quarter, which subscribers can get annually for $120. They are up to 67 editions. And over the years, the program has grown to include elaborate series like the brand's popular National Parks books, celebrations of spaceflight and letterpress, and dozens more themes. Coudal says the first few print runs were around 1,500 packs each—but they have grown to the 30,000-to-60,000 range today. He adds that aside from 'a couple very strange years around COVID,' gross revenue and DTC sales (which account for about 50% of the business) have increased almost every year since 2009. 'The thing about the subscription model is, first of all, people are paying us now for a product we haven't made yet,' Coudal says. 'That's really good for cash flow for a small company. But more important than that, having these four projects every year that people are funding ahead of time gives us a really great way to make a relationship with our customers and our retailers.' Each one also fulfills Coudal's third tenet for projects—he has an opportunity to explore an entirely new subject through the work. THE DRAPLIN FACTOR Of course, as Field Notes has risen in notoriety over the years, Draplin has been on a parallel path. He embodies the brand at design conferences like Adobe MAX and in his merch pop-ups, where he is treated like a rock star. I ask about the impact of Draplin's industry celebrity, and Coudal jumps in. 'I can answer that because Aaron's going to be humble about it. I think it's made a lot of difference. I think that Aaron has brought a lot of people to the brand, and he's also like our gospel preacher out on the road, telling the story—the gospel of Field Notes.' Before the brand had an advertising budget, Coudal says that was critical. And for Draplin, those talks aren't to simply shill. 'It's a reminder: You can go make your own stuff, too,' he says. With Draplin on the West Coast, Field Notes' core team of around 10 is anchored in Chicago. While Draplin says he used to be far more involved in the day-to-day around seven years ago, these days he regards his role as a bit of a mercenary. He drops in with ideas; Coudal will, say, assign him to 'go make something weird.' He's also pissed the team off, on occasion, by going rogue with an idea. Ultimately, 'I'm along for the ride at that point, because there's a den mother watching over us,' Draplin says. As a result of being removed from the daily routine, he adds, 'I get to experience the buzz of what the customer gets.' Which is, in all likelihood, a valuable temp check. 'Aaron's wisdom and inspiration are a constant good thing for the brand,' Coudal says. 'And while he's not checking the layouts anymore, he's certainly a big part of the general direction that the ship sails.' Looking to the future, Coudal says his goals are straightforward enough: Generate more interest, tell interesting stories, get wider distribution. Draplin, meanwhile, still seems a bit incredulous that the company exists in the first place. 'The biggest, funnest part about this thing—number one, we didn't lose any money. Isn't that cool? I would have been okay if we did,' he says. But, 'This can exist. This happened. [We've done] it for almost 20 years. It's fucking amazing. I'll tell you what . . . it exceeded my dreams.' The final deadline for Fast Company's Next Big Things in Tech Awards is Friday, June 20, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.
Vox
17-04-2025
- Politics
- Vox
Inside one state's fight to save child care
is a policy correspondent for Vox covering social policy. She focuses on housing, schools, homelessness, child care, and abortion rights, and has been reporting on these issues for more than a decade. Welcome to Field Notes, a reporter's log that gives readers an inside look into some of our most exciting reporting trips. This first appeared in the member-exclusive newsletter the Vox Explainer. Hi, hello! This is Rachel Cohen, a reporter at Vox, and I'm here to share a dispatch from a recent reporting trip to Boise, Idaho — where a unique and heated political fight unfolded in the world of child care policy. The piece not only looks at a growing partisan divide in child care but also a broader conservative push to deregulate the sector and redirect public funds away from the license-based centers government subsidies have historically favored. For both time and budget reasons, I don't get to travel for most stories I work on. In this case though, thanks to a grant from the Bainum Family Foundation to support child care reporting, I was quite fortunate to spend four days meeting with lawmakers, parents, and child care advocates in Idaho. There I worked to understand a very complex, sensitive, and confusing story. In journalism, what I've realized over the years is that oftentimes the very act of traveling to a region can signal to otherwise hesitant sources that you are taking this story seriously. It shows you are investing resources into getting it right, which increases the chances that people will help you and talk with you. They see you're making a greater effort than just picking up the phone, and that really does mean something in this line of work. Sometimes reporting trips are to collect more vivid detail and description to bring a narrative to life. I wanted to do that, certainly, but this trip was primarily for me to better understand what was really going on, to sit down with people face-to-face, and clarify a series of fast-moving and complicated ideas. I did make a lot of calls. I did review all the existing local reporting before I flew out. And I filed my own public records request with the state of Idaho. But I suspected that going there would prove valuable in being able to report this story better than just doing those things in isolation. Given all the flight delays and other travel complications, I'm very glad that turned out to be true. You can find the story here. Here's a look inside my reporting. Field Notes SUNDAY, MARCH 9 10:30 am: I flew from Washington, DC, where I live, to Atlanta, and then on to Boise. After dealing with some delays with my flight layover, I finally reached my hotel a little after midnight. The long day of travel gave me a lot of time to review my notes and get ready for what I knew would be a busy week. At the Boise Airport, I was greeted by a nice reminder that I was surrounded by some famous potatoes. A sign that greeted me at the Boise Airport when I arrived. Rachel Cohen/Vox MONDAY, MARCH 10 12 pm: My first meeting was at the (very beautiful) Idaho State Capitol, a short walk from my hotel. I learned I was in what is known as the 'Gem State,' a nickname first coined when Idaho was just a US territory in honor of all the precious gemstones around. I sat down with Democratic state Rep. Megan Egbert to learn more about the H243 bill and what she was hearing from her constituents. She was actively involved in the legislative opposition. The main entrance really was beautiful, and to my surprise — maybe just because I'm used to stricter protocol — there was no security. Anyone could walk right in. Rachel Cohen/Vox 2 pm: Later that afternoon, I went over to the Idaho Association of Commerce & Industry, which is basically their state chamber of commerce, and met with the longtime president to discuss how the lack of child care access affects the state's workforce and economy. I turned left. We sat in a big conference room for our meeting. Rachel Cohen/Vox 7 pm: At night, I had some calls with child care providers. Idaho is two hours behind DC, and being able to talk to people in their own time zone made reporting a whole lot easier. Oftentimes people can only talk with the media after work, so coordinating evening discussions was just a whole lot easier on Mountain time. TUESDAY, MARCH 11 10:30 am: I spent the morning meeting with sources off the record (so I can't share specifically who), but I can say I had some very clarifying coffee dates. Then I made my way over to Lakewood Montessori, a reputable child care center in Boise where I got to tour and sit down with the owner, Mary, to talk about the proposed bill. It was a beautiful day, and I knew I wanted to speak with as many child care providers as I could while I was in town. From my tour of the Boise Montessori child care center. It was a really lovely facility, and seeing such cute kids always makes the drier parts of the reporting process worth it. Rachel Cohen/Vox 2 pm: After lunch, I headed back to the state Capitol where I met separately with both of the bill's co-sponsors, Rep. Rod Furniss and Rep. Barbara Ehardt. I learned that the bill was going to be amended the next day to restore maximum staff-child ratios, and I spoke with the lawmakers about why they believed deregulation was a good idea in the first place. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12 10 am: Today I had several more off-the-record meetings with sources and calls with child care providers around the state. 5:30 pm: I had the pleasure of having dinner with my old editor, Haley, who I interned for 12 years ago at the Washington Monthly. She now lives in Boise with her husband and two kids. In Haley's kitchen! Rachel Cohen/Vox THURSDAY, MARCH 13 8 am: My last day in town proved valuable. After persistent badgering, several sources finally agreed to talk, including from Wonder School — a company facing public backlash for supporting the bill — and officials from the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. I also connected with people I'd talk with further when I returned to DC as more legislative developments unfolded throughout March. 11 pm: I got home and spent another three-and-a-half weeks reporting and writing the article!
