“I’m flexible on timeline. My method of documenting everything wasn’t the best looking back. But whose would have been?
I think big picture though, The Speech-to-Text Institute was this group of powerful corps (Veritext, et al.) that came together to propagandize the field and sell digital reporting. They used an outdated industry forecast (Ducker Report) and pushed out information with no adjustment for current industry initiatives (Project Steno, Open Steno, NCRA A to Z). I published about the fraud they were committing. They got sued (Trey Perez), shut down their website, and never bothered to defend themselves in court. Ultimately the court reporter shortage fraud was a little bit of truth, the retirement cliff and localized shortages, mixed with big lies about not being able to fill the gap with stenographers by corporations that had a financial interest in not filling the gap. To this day the fraud claims have not been seriously disputed by anyone of note. The worst I get is people that clearly haven’t read anything I’ve published who want to school me on how the shortage is real. It’s real, but it was exaggerated and exacerbated by the biggest names in the industry to sell digital. That’s the bottom line.
And beyond my role in it, being willing to document and publish what others couldn’t for whatever reasons, I think the story of the people that supported me really should be told. Because in the end it wasn’t just me. There were others that chose not to be named. There were people like Jackie Mentecky that came right out and vouched for the correctness of what I’d published. I owe them all in a way I’ll never be able to repay. To this day, I have people that were duped into legal transcription or digital reporting that tell me they found my stuff and want to switch over to steno. We have people realizing they’re misclassified employees on a scale never seen in this industry. So our efforts have not been in vain. I suppose from a certain point of view we’re winning because the larger corps can’t dispute anything without calling more attention to it all.
Interested in seeing what you can do.”
People who say there’s a shortage of whatever workers they happen to be talking about, whether it be court reporters or teachers or whatever, need a reminder of how supply and demand is supposed to work in a capitalistic system. It should be simple: If you need a person’s labor and expertise, you need to offer them enough money to motivate them to do the job you need them to do.
I think STTI may be another example of why some people are saying capitalism is dead, that we are no longer living in a capitalistic system, that it’s instead a post-capitalist, technofeudalistic system.
Don’t forget the person who told you the Ducker Report was wrong in the first place. You argued with me and were skeptical and I shared with you the numbers, then you started investigating it and realized I was right. Oh, but you already did forget.
It’s been a long time. Human memory can only go so far, particularly after I had my medical incident.
Thank you for tipping me off.