Category: New Reporters

Bulletin: Black History Month & The Lack of Diversity on Stenonymous

It’s Black History Month! I don’t do much acknowledgement on here of the “recognition months.” There is a part of me that feels it’s malignantly ceremonial. What I mean by that is, more or less, while we take this time to acknowledge and remember the contributions of Black people to the United States, and that’s important; we, as a country and society, all too often then turn a blind eye to the racial and systemic injustices of this day and age, comforted by the “ceremony” of giving those people a month.

(NOTE: Phrased that way to parody the “us versus them” mentality of the chronically bigoted.)

This is very similar to how I view the way court reporters are treated. Companies and courts tell us how important we are and what a good job we do, turn around and cut our jobs, and then blame us for shortage. The respect we have is mostly ceremonial. When it comes down to actually improving our lives and working conditions through a simple gesture like speaking slower and clearer there are very, very few that make active efforts to help. The primary difference? Most of us can, if we so choose, give up the game and go do something else. Not so with the color of skin. Imagine if someone spent a whole month telling you how important you were only for you to live in a reality where you are more likely to experience excessive use of force by police. “Stop resisting!” “The beatings will continue until morale improves.”

(NOTE: It is pretty funny/sad/interesting to see how systems react to court reporters standing up for equality. That is to say, we are placated and nothing is done to further equality. Seems malignantly ceremonial.)

I have to grapple with the fact that most do not view “the ceremony” my way. It is viewed as a positive thing. I appreciate that very much. I would gladly host submissions related to Black History Month (or Pride, etc). I’m not trying to blackout or cancel the celebration or stifle discussion about what we have learned from history. But I would need people to come forward and submit things. Otherwise, it’s just me, Whitey McWhiteface, writing what I think should be written. Sharing what I think should be shared. And occasionally being called names for it.

Comment from a video posted by Christopher Day.

But in the end it’s not about me. I acknowledge the power of diverse teams. I acknowledge that I can only bring one perspective out of the billions on this Earth. It is one mission of this blog to attract more viewpoints, opinions, facts, ideas. And I will stand resolute and spotlight anyone that’ll take the time to share with me what they’re doing or what they think should be posted. Because I know stuff is happening just like Margary Rogers’ 2022 project, or Kim Xavier’s video from 4 years ago. I just don’t have omniscience. The community’s help is required to keep tabs on and publicize stuff, at least until the day someone can be employed full time to investigate and write about these things.

Help bring an end to the lack of diversity on Stenonymous. Please reach out with any submissions or projects you want featured. Contact@stenonymous.com. We don’t have the same institutional and organizational bars as the Journal of Court Reporting. Let’s press that advantage and make some magic happen!

P.S.

If you’ve ever wondered why I’m such a hellraiser on issues related to our field, simply put I’ve spent enough time reading up on private equity and documenting the behavior of various people and entities related to our field. I see pretty clearly that they’re looking to push the median wage of our field, about $60,000, toward the median wage of the United States, $30,000, and pocket the difference, multiplied by thousands of court reporters. What would you do to make $3 million a year? Even if you wouldn’t do a damn thing, keep in mind we live in a world where people occasionally stab each other over stolen lunch. Pretty safe to say the big box brigade will do whatever is within its power to take that money from you, especially when it can be given a sham veneer of shortage and legality. The more resistance that is put in the way, the slower this happens, with the possibility of it never occurring. So that’s the “altruistic” bit. I’d do almost anything except illegal things to keep your money in your wallet.

But I get the sense many of you are wary of that. Perhaps it would comfort you to know I am also self-serving. I have a disability wherein 50% to 80% of those with it cannot hold a full-time job. I have another disability right on top of that. I not only hold a full-time job, but I am in the 10% or 20% able to pass a stenographic training course. Then I’m in one of the best stenographic jobs in the whole country, which only maybe 1% of us can hold at any one time. So imagine being in the 1% of the 20% of the 20% (0.04%?). Now imagine that you know, almost factually, that there are forces that are systematically plotting to take that away (example) and that your future hinges on the actions of professionals all across your field.

You’d be Stenonymous too.

Brief Hiatus September 2023

Hey, everybody. There are some great articles and ideas in the works. I’ve had an uptick of information from sources across the country and am doing my best to stay on top of things. I also have several articles/ideas in the works for corporations that have opened up to me about their plans and capabilities.

Unfortunately, due to family stuff, this is taking a lot longer than usual, so please bear with me. Low Stenonymous funding means I have to roll without any help. Unfortunately, the blog has to take a backseat to family and work obligations.

I do feel an obligation to my readers and contributors too, but I have to be realistic in prioritizing.

Thank you for your understanding and all the support you’ve given this blog! More regular posting should resume within a month.

For Self-Learners: How To Grade Your Steno Test

I came across this Reddit post by someone teaching themselves steno. They did not understand the grading process. Of course, everyone, including me, pointed them to the NCRA’s PDF about what constitutes an error. But I got deep into the math and I would like to share it here so that people might be able to use it in the future if they get confused:

What constitutes an error: (NCRA Link Again)

So then you take your words per minute, and figure out 5% of that (95% is passing for most places.)

(Words per minute * .05.) * dictation time in minutes.

5 min 225 WPM take.

(225 * . 05) * 5

(11.25) * 5

56.25 errors allowed. Some places allow 57.

I hope this helps.

You can also do total words * the number of errors allowed.

(225 * 5) = total words

(total words) * .05

from the above example:

(1,125) * .05 = 56.25.

If you need accuracy of 96%, use .04 instead.

If you need accuracy of 97%, use .03 instead.

If you need accuracy of 97.5%, use .025 instead.

If you need accuracy of 98%, use .02 instead.

If you need accuracy of 99%, use .01 instead.

As they say in fairytales, the end.

Addendum:

This originally posted with an error where it said 97.5% should use 0.035. This is false. It should have been 0.025 and was corrected.

Finally, Another Song About Stenography

After I was given permission to mirror Andy Bajaña’s song, things dried up for a while on my end. I’m pleased to announce a new stenographer song by Anonymous, commissioned by Stenonymous.com.

The song’s available for download at $1.00. The song’s already free on YouTube and easy to share, but I know there will be those of you that want the wav file or to show support.

It’s thanks to this community that I’m able to do things like this. It’s like I keep saying, more resources give me more power to advance our interests.

Perhaps that makes it a good time to lay out some of my long-term goals. I’d like to grow big enough to begin to centralize our stenographic media, get some of our best influencers on a payroll or contract basis, and really begin extending our reach using several different entertainment styles. It’ll take me a long while to do it alone. Not so with the help of my fellow court reporters.

Regardless of what you think of that plan, enjoy the song, and have a great day!

NCRA Town Hall: A to Z, Public & Government Relations

I attended the National Court Reporters Association Town Hall today with President Jason Meadors, and boy, am I glad I did. It gave me confidence that the association and its leaders are pushing hard to represent the interests of members. The entire session was almost exactly an hour, so there’s a lot to unpack.

Present at the meeting were, as stated, NCRA President Jason Meadors, Executive Director Dave Wenhold, Max Curry, a Past President and Chair of the A to Z committee, Annemarie Roketenetz, Director of Communications & PR, and Jocelynn Moore, Director of Government Relations. The meeting started off with a lengthy discussion from Max Curry about the A to Z program, and he took the time to explain where the program started and how it was completely revamped. According to Mr. Curry, A to Z began with about 50 boots-on-the-ground programs in the states. That fell away when the pandemic happened, and most programs closed. Programs in Texas, Tennessee, Minnesota, and California all went remote, which showed that the program could be done remotely. A new vision has come into place where the program can be done remotely and all of the resources can be centralized behind the program, with fewer boots-on-the-ground programs. Eight programs will be done a year, four asynchronous and four live. This is to capture the different kinds of learners — ones that can learn on their own AND people that need interactivity to succeed.

One of the truly exciting plans was for a landing page that can be centralized that brings people back to A to Z. NCRA is planning to reach out to organizations and associations to have them host a button or link to the landing page, creating a spiderweb or net that helps catch all the people that might be interested in this wonderful career and bring them back to the NCRA’s A to Z to give steno a try. They may ask firms to donate $5 to $10 of their Search Engine Optimization budget to help bring people to the landing page. NCRA President-Elect Kristin Anderson’s Houston President’s Party will act as a fundraiser for SEO dollars to ramp up advertising about court reporting and captioning as careers.

Lisa Dennison also spoke and informed us that 15 A to Z scholarships were given out at $750 per award. NCRA interacted with ASCA, the American School Counselor Association, getting school counselors’ contact information, adding them to a contact list, and getting them information about court reporting. It was mentioned that the communications team has been working on Instagram, QR Codes, and other ways to spread the message. Reliance donated money for student memberships for previous A to Z graduates, which helped grow association membership as well.

It was mentioned that NCRA continues to work with vendors such as Advantage, ProCAT, and Stenograph. The StenoCAT iPad app, iStenoPad, was also described as a way to simplify the logistics of getting stenotypes to participants.

It was explained that last year 295 students were picked up by A to Z. Max Curry clarified that some local programs do not coordinate with headquarters, so numbers from those programs are unavailable. Ms. Dennison asked that participant lists be sent to the NCRA so that better data can be compiled.

A quote by Brianna Coppola was shared. “I have never seen or heard of another ‘career test drive’ course. It really spotlights the encouragement within the community of reporters and their love for their jobs and dedication to the field.”

Dineen Squillante asked about the possibility of reaching out to departments of labor in each state. Lisa Dennison responded that it was something that could be looked into.

2022 Program Leaders and Speakers were thanked. It’s an extensive list, and I feel they deserve the recognition.

Ms. Dennison made it clear that the door was open to anyone that wanted to reach out on A to Z.

Annemarie Roketenetz talked a little bit about plants for Court Reporting & Captioning week, and a lot about the many endeavors of NCRA. She also mentioned that a number of press releases would be made, leading up to a larger press release that will link back to all the smaller ones. This is in line with dispatching our news and events regularly, and a very smart move on NCRA’s part. Several events were mentioned. Review the Town Hall recording at the Learning Center for more, I cannot do it justice in print. Our PR and communications are in good hands.

Mr. Meadors noted that Legislative Bootcamp has been called a “money grab.” He stated NCRA does not make money on bootcamp and reiterated what an important program it really is.

Jocelynn Moore expounded on bootcamp, explaining that it is extremely immersive training on how to be effective grassroots lobbyists. She stated that the training is “going to give you all of the tools necessary to go in front of a legislator, oppose legislation that doesn’t agree with the profession, or advocate for a bill coming through. Some of the topics covered will be “politics 101,” how associations work, and how you can mobilize with other members in your state to move forward on a particular issue.

The Training for Realtime Writers Act was mentioned. It was also mentioned that it will be difficult to reintroduce this under a Congress attempting to cut spending. More information will be provided on that at bootcamp, but also more on the situation from Indiana. Participants will learn how to advocate in front of different parties and teach members to speak to legislators, because legislators do not always have all of the information we have about our field.

Ms. Moore continued on to talk about the Indiana issue. The proposed prohibition of stenographers from Indiana courts was revealed. We learned that NCRA began a grassroots campaign to find out what happened and why the proposed change was introduced. The organization has found difficulty getting information about the change, but finds the language to be discriminatory and mandatory, robbing judges of their discretion and forcing them not to use a stenographer.

It was a packed hour. My only criticism of the event would be that they ran out of time for questions. But you know what? It happens. President Meadors directed that efforts should be made to record questions asked and that efforts would be made to have them answered. Everything wrapped up with Dave Wenhold thanking the participants for coming out on a Saturday. He said that if you get any information on Indiana, you can pass it to him or Ms. Moore. President Meadors noted that just showing up and asking questions meant participants were dedicated to the profession. The meeting subsequently came to a close.

Refinement of the programs we have is going to seize the day here. Leadership is doing something very impressive. My opinion may not count for much, but I’d thank each of them for the hard work that they do and continuing to fight for this profession. It’s inspiring, and I hope reading a little about it has inspired all of you.

The Learning Center can be used to locate and view past Town Halls.

MockWoman: Apprentice Required for Mock Depo Experience

Ana Fatima Costa, AKA MockWoman, is a coach and mentor in our field that has been providing internships for court reporters for over 13 years free of charge. To continue this program, there is now a cost of $197 for the experience, which may be covered by the apprentice, a mentor, or a sponsoring agency/business. I sponsored a student in the past and it was a good experience for them, so I have real faith in Ana’s ability to provide an excellent internship experience.

Do you know anyone that might benefit from this real-world experience of simulated testimony and learning under Ana’s guidance? Please consider letting them know about this opportunity or sponsoring them today. See the social media page or check out the informational PDF below.

MockWoman_Cooley-expert-mock-depos_June-23-24-2022Download

The event is June 23 and June 24 at 3 Embarcadero Center, 20th floor, San Francisco, CA 94111.

For more information, e-mail afccoaching@gmail.com.

Stenonymous Upgrades Payment System and Announces Matching Pledges!

In order to facilitate the exponential growth of the blog and payment for services I plan to provide through it, I have upgraded the payment structure to work through Stripe. Check out the new system below. Please note that to the extent you are able to justify future payments to me as a business expense, you may do so, this is all above board and reported income.

Please know that my general plans remain unchanged. I will be recovering the next few weeks and updates will likely be sparse. This blog, based on its stats, may have achieved the threshold for major systemic change. This means that regardless of what associations do or do not do, I will likely be able to begin doing things that will achieve my original goals of better reporter pay and treatment, as well as larger revenues for existing stenotype services businesses.

Yesterday, about 0.5% of this field came out in open support for me and nearly 3% of you read about my ordeal without a single negative comment. It is the love and support of my loved ones, including all of you, that will make a recovery possible. I cannot overstate how grateful I am to everyone. In the spirit of passing on the love that has been shown to me, I pledge to donate all of today’s donations equally to National Court Reporters Foundation, Paying It Forward (Allison Hall), Protect Your Record Project, Project Steno, and Open Steno. Next year, by or before February 27th, I will also match the donation made to each of the three today up to $1,000 each. If you want to see me lose $5,000 next year, or if you want to see these wonderful organizations be collectively $10,000 richer next year, help me collect $5,000 today for these amazing endeavors. If 3% of the field were to donate $30, each organization would receive over $5,000 today and an additional $1,000 next year. This is the collective power of stenographers.

Can we do it? I think so.

*Please note, I will have to deduct combined Stripe/WP fees of approximately 5%. About $200 was donated before I realized that, so I will eat the fee on $200. It would be too cost prohibitive to eat the fee on the thousands of dollars that may be raised from this post.

Fundraiser Results:

A little under $800 was donated. $160 has been sent to each organization. An additional $160 will be sent to each next year. Lower than I’d hoped, but not bad for an impromptu fundraiser! Thank you to all of you that made this one possible. Looking forward to going bigger.

I Am Alive and Well

This December I have been experiencing an onset of mental illness. I was unaware. I did some terrible things that I can’t take back. I was hospitalized and am now better than ever.

When my thinking finally became clear again, I realized that I had been given a second chance at life. No one was physically hurt, which is great, considering my court family just lost someone this year. I can use this experience to help others.

To anyone I hurt emotionally, lashed out at, or latched onto, I apologize. I did not know I was losing it. Now that I know such a thing is possible, it will never happen again; medical intervention was necessary.

The antitrust conspiracy post will be rewritten to be simple and constructive. Stenonymous will return to its original goal of uplifting the profession. I will take some months off.

A word of caution to those that were rejoicing over my suffering: What does not kill us makes us stronger, and I didn’t die.

A word of advice: If you notice behavioral changes or mood issues, go to the ER. It just might save your life.

For me personally, this is going to be a positive. We now know that even in the event of psychosis I’m nonviolent. Better still, I just created and managed the industry’s largest blog while mentally ill. Now that I am mentally prepared, my life is about to get a lot easier. Years ago, we got NCRA 2.0. Who knew that was possible with people too?

If you’d like a great song for this blog post, check out Poor Jack from Nightmare Before Christmas. It fits incredibly well.

Court Reporting Antitrust Conspiracy Explained

*The initial version of this post was written in a vulgar, ranting, raving, and confusing manner due to a medical episode I was having. Sorry for how that was written. I have scrapped it. It held no creative or intellectual value that cannot be reproduced at a later date. Many of the people I named and cursed at are actually good people that I admire.

See the new version below:

This time, with love.

The “conspiracy” is simple. It is very similar to what Purdue Pharma did to healthcare. Lies and misdirection, as well as possible government corruption. I should note that in our case, because the government has not yet investigated to my knowledge, it is hard to tell if we’re seeing tacit parallelism or a fully-planned plot. That said, numbers do not lie, and there are problems with the numbers.

Veritext, US Legal, STTI, and others publish misleading and demonstrably false info. There is likely a baseline assumption that it won’t matter in 10 or 20 years because AI will “take over.”

Data starts coming in that AI sucks. We can also extrapolate from our own experiences and Testifying While Black that recording and transcribing will simply never be as good as us. Nobody notices because we’re not data scientists or actuaries. I notice because my love for court reporting leads me to embrace media, math, computer programming, science, etc.

Our associations, either by design or habit, just keep staying the course. Old tricks don’t work in a new and modern world. I start to change minds with a $10,000 budget and become suspicious of the association management industry. Dave Wenhold, whose intelligence and charisma I openly admire, becomes suspicious to me. This is about where I start to deteriorate. How do I use my media to bring people to associations that shut down new ideas without debate; as NCRA did for Amendment 5 this year? How do I support associations that give responses so boneheaded a six year old could do better? Even my beloved NYSCRA seems intent on crushing new ideas quietly and behind closed doors.

NYSCRA also seems oddly inert whenever I suggest anything that would strengthen the association.

Then, like with Purdue, there is potential government corruption. There is a concept called the revolving door, where someone on behalf of the company catches the ear of a government official and the government official just so happens to do what the company wants. Then the government official retires to a nice new job with the company. So far I’m told California Court Reporter Licensing Board officials have actually done this — which is incredibly suspicious. California may well be the state with the strictest regulations for court reporting. It refuses to regulate digital court reporting. Consumers should probably demand the complete dissolution of the board. It would be like heavily regulating snack foods but refusing to regulate pretzels.

Let’s not forget Arizona, where my public comment was completely ignored by Director Byers, even though I sent him an e-mail well before my personal issues began. Very convenient for AAERT and anyone who thinks courtrooms should be investing in recording equipment.

There are also issues here in New York. It is apparent that members of the public are being told no spots are open and the government is sitting on provisional applications.

I cannot say for sure what we are seeing. I do see a pattern of passive aggressiveness toward court reporters from corporations, associations, and government — a passive aggressiveness that peculiarly fades any time someone questions it.

The antitrust conspiracy may not be an actual conspiracy. But if I was designing a plot to exaggerate and exacerbate the stenographer shortage, it would look exactly like what we are experiencing today.