Category: Reporters

For The Record Acquired By Tyler Technologies for $212 Million. What’s Next?

A cherished friend let me in on an article posted by JackimWoods & Co. it’s made its rounds on Facebook so I don’t expect it’ll be completely surprising to many of you. Let me go on record and say I respect Rich Jackim and the article, but I’d like to do a little bit of commentary on this one.

Right at the top, it’s written, “this transaction marks a decisive shift toward institutional-scale investment in AI-powered court reporting technology, signaling the beginning of a structural transformation that will fundamentally reshape the court reporting and legal support services sector within the next three to five years.” He’s not wrong that this is significant, but let’s not forget that For The Record was one of the companies represented on the Speech-to-Text Institute’s board. Rather than defend the organization or its fraudulent statements, For The Record and all the others let it collapse and flounder in the court case it was named in. And it was only three years ago that a For The Record transcript was called a deficit product in a high-profile case. I’ll just note generally, you have to see the guy has financial interests in the consolidation of the industry, so read it from that point of view.

But the fact remains that if big money is spending this much money consolidating the industry, that means they’ll be using their money to steer it a certain way. They have been using their money to steer it a certain way. That certain way is reducing the number of stenographer positions or pushing us into the role of transcribers, unseen, unheard, quietly correcting and/or certifying the AI’s work behind the scenes for a fraction of what we make today and a whole lot less autonomy.

Let me be really clear: You cannot skill your way out of this. This is economic warfare. This is us spending the next 10 years playing musical chairs while the big money collectively deletes stenographer seats one by one unless we start making moves. Moves like unionization. Our field has always thrived on a kind of survivorship bias. We watch this happen, it’s probably Armageddon. But at least the people who still have jobs at that point will be able to say “I made it.”

I’ll note also that people have been talking about the Veritext CEU webinar last night. Finally Veritext came out and said it, “digital is equal, we get 3,000 applicants a month and we accept 2% of those.” This is what I heard. Do I know the truth? No. Veritext habitually lies and abuses the trust of reporters. Do I blame Andrea Wecker, their current front person? Nope. She’s probably made the same exact calculation, and wants to be able to say “I made it.”

I’m exploring some ideas as to what to do about it all. I’m AI-powered too these days, so we’ve got a shot (joke).

Bulletin: Revealing Stenonymous Bot, Stenonymous’s AI-Powered Chatbot.

Long-time users of the site may have noticed a little change recently. There’s an annoying speech bubble on the bottom right of the site now.

The speech bubble at the bottom right gives you access to Stenonymous bot.

Finally, a place to ask the important questions, like “Is Chris Day a nutjob communist?” I’ve spent a small amount of time training this thing, so it’s ready for the hard questions.

Bonus points if you get it to flip out and say something deluded.

Feel free to copy and paste your chats into the comments or send me funny screenshots via email and social media. I’m sure we can have a laugh at the expense of the environment before it inevitably breaks and I disable it.

I’ll just ask that if it entertains you for any appreciable length of time, please drop a donation on the front page of Stenonymous.com. I know one glorious reader knows, these things don’t come cheap.

Stenonymous Bot debut

Bulletin: ChatGPT Caricature Image Trend 2026

Lots of us have been doing the ChatGPT caricatures on Facebook. On the one hand, for me at least, it’s always interesting to see what the machine puts out. On the other hand, some people point to the waste of resources these AI data centers are or can be. The discussion rolls pretty deep.

I, myself, have come to a point where I’ll use AI for entertainment and, if the chance ever arises, success. Though in its current form I don’t see how AI could boost us on the record beyond what companies like Stenograph and Advantage are already doing. And the results, from what I’ve been hearing, are pretty mixed.

Maybe that makes me unimaginative. I’ll have to think about it.

A 2026 Musing on God

Not a court reporting post. Stop reading if you don’t want to talk religion.

I don’t talk about it often, but I was raised Catholic, and I found a lot of value in that. It’s hard to describe having a connection to God to those that have never experienced it. It feels warm and special.

Harder still is it to describe what would lead one away from that connection. I think I was 14. With regard to the federal restriction of funding of stem cell research, I felt very strongly that restrictions on such research were poorly thought, particularly if those restrictions were for religious reasons. I thought, clearly, if God gave us free will and gave us all this wonderful science to uplift mankind, surely he wanted us to use it, cure the sick, and create a world devoid of suffering.

If heaven is free of suffering, and we are made in God’s image, isn’t it natural that we should want heaven on Earth? I think if we’re honest, most of us would wish it on ourselves. Why not others?

But my awareness of the world grew, and I came to know that there were many who would not be satisfied with heaven on Earth. There were many that enjoyed the suffering of others, especially if circumstances were right.

(As best I understand, we have in groups and out groups in our psychology. The New York implicit bias charge explains it better than I do.)

And I started to look at this world and the many, many things that happen in it. Some of the better moments can feel supernatural, like, this must be God.

But oh, my God, when you look at some of the horrible stuff that happens to people that don’t deserve it. Look at some of the Epstein stuff. The world’s richest and most powerful people were cool with it. What on God’s Earth?

And so I came to the conclusion that if God was all powerful, he was letting a lot of stuff like this happen, and, well, better to disbelieve than worship an evil God.

The interesting thing about this self-imposed atheism is that I still found myself in a state of belief at times.

Take, for example, my medical issue in 2021. There were many ways I could have ended up injured or killed. Instead, I survived, my union protected my job, and I met the love of my life two months later. There’s got to be a God to set all that in motion, right?

But then why me? What makes me so special? That I should just be lucky / blessed enough to be born to a white middle class Staten Island family in 1990 while so many starve and suffer across the world and in our country.

And if there is a God, only he knows why I spend time thinking about it. Maybe I really believe that it’ll lead to something profound.

I can’t shake the feeling that if there is a God he’d want me to tell the world he gave us free will so we could make heaven on Earth. This is human nature 101, we imagine things and then make them happen. From cave paintings to rocket ships in less than 64,000 years. So imagine a world with explosive investment in all the things that make us better people? I just think the returns are too great to pass up for all of us and our children.

We live in a world with real problems and it’s going to take a lot of courage and investment to solve them. I just hope we elect leaders that are willing to try.

And with whatever resources life grants me, I’ll do my part.

National Court Reporters Association Loses Approximately 1000 Members in 3 Years.

Posting the corruption article the other day inspired me to review some of the information in it.

I realized I had posted the NCRA stats that were posted as of August 2023, which were stats from December 2022.

I compared that to the most updated stats on its website.

National Court Reporters Association statistics posted as of January 23, 2026

From 11,946 to 11,009 is a loss of 937 overall members.

The loss of court reporter members from 8,980 to 8,113 is a loss of 867.

Some of this is no doubt attributable to the shortage. People are retiring out. That was never in dispute. But even by the bleakest of statistics published by the Speech-to-Text Institute before it was accused of fraud and shut down its website, there are a couple hundred new reporters entering the workforce each year. Where are they in this equation?

Either they lack the knowledge of NCRA, or lack the motivation to join. And in either case, the NCRA should probably be studying why that is.

But this is the organizational issue with NCRA, and a big reason I left. The organization lacks introspection. It is ever focused on blaming the outsider, the other, the people like me that dare criticize the direction we’re headed. In such a culture and environment, it is nearly impossible to examine and ask, “is it something we’re doing wrong? Are we the bad guys?”

And to a degree, this is shouting to the void, hoping the words carry and the winds change. Because it’s not just retirees that left. There’s an entire network of people just like me that gave up their certification and said “goodbye, old friend.” We lost the belief in the organization, and we took our money and effort with us. Not just so-called “checkbook members”, but people willing to donate serious time to the organization, and in some cases, fundraise for it.

I will say in NCRA’s defense that, over 3 or 4 years, a loss of about 200 a year, is far less bleeding than the Speech-to-Text Institute’s forecasting, which was something like a loss of 700 reporters a year in exactly this time frame. So at least there’s that.

“Am I the bad guy?”

National Court Reporters Association 2024 990 Filing Now Available

2024 snapshot:

NCRA 990 – 2024Download

In the past I’ve written about how easy it might be to bribe our leaders.

I’ve also noted that, even where there’s no proof of corruption, the current Executive Director of the National Court Reporters Association, Dave Wenhold, either personally or through his management company, runs lots of associations. So many that some might say it could impact the amount of time spent on our national association’s issues.

And so I’ll add today that it’s sort of comical that, at least in 2024, expenses went over revenue by almost exactly what Wenhold’s salary / pay is. 4.93M expenses. 4.6M revenue. And Wenhold’s payment? 0.3M.

And yeah, I get the whole song and dance that this is the guy who can run an association of this size. But, you know, so was Jim Cudahy at one point, and we all saw how that turned out with the Speech-to-Text Institute.

I stand by what I said in the corruption article. We should send our own people to association management training and have one of us steering the ship. The consolidation of too much power in one person is a dangerous thing. We had the good sense to write term limits into NCRA’s constitution and bylaws. Why, then, do we consolidate, year after year, one man’s power over the organization? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we need to flip the seat every year. But after half a decade of frozen/falling revenue and a fairly stagnant membership count, and a man that’s been involved with the court reporting profession for 17 years or more, isn’t it time to try a new approach?

Critical thinking demands the question at least pass through the minds of the Board of Directors.

BlueLedge is an NCRA Qualified Program and Kentuckiana is Allegedly Being Sold to Veritext

Well, first what’s confirmed out of the way, BlueLedge is a qualified vendor right on NCRA’s website. BlueLedge being a leading digital court reporting training outfit famously integrated into Veritext’s pipeline.

I’ll be honest. I told my source I didn’t know about it, but it doesn’t surprise me. The National Court Reporters Association can’t really discriminate against BlueLedge without risking another antitrust lawsuit. And to be honest, the course as advertised by BlueLedge meets CEU requirements.

This being a real reason I support moving a good deal of our overall funding to individuals and companies that can actually speak out against bad business practices — such as BlueLedge gaining a presence on college websites across America through Ed 2 Go — rather than basically be forced to work with them and advertise them. But what do I know? I’m just a guy that documented all this in years gone by.

Moving on, I got a long email from an anonymous source. In short, it alleges that Veritext has “just bought” Kentuckiana Court Reporting, which encompasses Kentuckiana, Churchill Reporting, Kentucky Court Reporters, Pike Court Reporting, TriStar Court Reporting, and Milestone Court Reporting. Veritext itself has not yet advertised this alleged acquisition. The email mentions that there may be a lot of internal turmoil, with digitals preparing to flee if they “lose benefits,” the case apparently being that Kentuckiana keeps digitals as regular employees and that Veritext tends not to.

The main theme: “Students should be warned that Veritext will be headhunting them, and what to expect from them and what their reputation is.”

To be even more frank, students, here’s what to expect from most corporations: When they need you, the relationship is good, even often weighted in some way in your favor. But they are always working on reworking that relationship to a point where they don’t really need you, and as that happens, you can expect rates to freeze/fall or work to be withheld in favor of giving it to others who will do it cheaper. And as corporate consolidation of the court reporting industry continues, we can expect that the pool of satisfied reporters will become smaller.

In summary, you will be told there is a shortage and you are very needed right up until there is a digital reporter and transcriber ready to replace you for less. And if there never is, congratulations, they likely had you doing it cheaper.

Of course, as with all things, the truth is nuanced and layered. But take this as a very direction-of-the-river-absent-other-information type of post. Good luck.

Bulletin: 2026 Arrives. What Will It Bring?

Happy New Year, everyone. Things are going well for me personally. I very much hope the same for all of you reading.

This blog’s had quite a run, from the early posts trying to help new reporters to the shortage investigation stuff. It remains, within my knowledge, the largest independent publication in the industry, with approximately 1,500 visitors per month even when I’m not writing much.

As for what happens next, the interesting thing is that I don’t know. I’ve had some interesting articles fall through the cracks, like Naegeli taking advantage of a witness / pro se litigant. Will it be more sand sifting through my fingers or will I hit something concrete to write about?

That depends, in large part, on the community. The things you send me. The things you comment on this blog. The things you write to me on Facebook. And ultimately juggling all of that with my personal schedule.

Still lots of memories to be made, reader.

Enjoy 2026.