NCRA: Please Don’t Talk About Us On Social Media, It Might Force Us To Address Your Concerns…

National Court Reporters Association:

Message from Kristin Anderson, new President of the NCRA 2023-2024

I’ll start with an admission: The headline is not entirely fair. It’s my belief that the individuals involved with NCRA care very much individually. Especially STRONG. But the organization itself has problems, and I’m ready to write about what I’ve experienced and largely why I no longer have confidence in the association.

I do take umbrage with the whole concept of “don’t use social media to discuss the issues.” It restricts effective communication? As a guy who runs the equivalent of a stenographic spy network, I would say the communication’s pretty poor no matter what we do. In the time that it took to systematically dismantle the corporate campaign against stenographers, I’m hard pressed to name anything NCRA has done besides conventions and business as usual. Telling us not to discuss the issues is basically saying “we do not want you to participate.” I have found in my dealings with NCRA that the association doesn’t do anything unless you have an army at your back, and social media is exactly how that army organizes. The army wouldn’t need to organize in the first place if the association was proactive instead of always playing damage control. That’s not Kristin Anderson’s fault. She’s doing what she has to do as president of the association. But there is a real deafness in NCRA’s organization culture and core.

Let me put out there that I was not, historically, an NCRA hater. In my early years I disagreed with some stuff, but overall, I saw the benefit of a large national association for stenographers. I used the power of media to change minds when Frank N Sense was harping on NCRA. I joined NCRA STRONG and put in a lot of effort to try to make a difference, including preparation of a draft white paper and video to help get the message out there that there were issues with recording versus stenography. My efforts were mothballed without explanation. See that from my perspective: Took the time to volunteer, attend discussions, work on materials, and then had hours of time deleted for a reason I was never given. It’s amazing I didn’t call them out right then and there. Then I proposed a series of amendments in 2021 and one of them was so popular that the NCRA made up a reason it couldn’t be voted on. That’s right, this organization that’s always whining for people to take part didn’t even allow members to vote on what I proposed.

Then I had my medical incident, and I wrote some stuff about Dave Wenhold, the Executive Director, that I didn’t have the evidence for, and that was wrong of me. And I genuinely understand if people in the NCRA felt unsure about me at that point, but I was still trying to be a team player and alerted the organization to the fact that its name was being used to spread lies. I also became a National Court Reporters Foundation Angel in 2022. Next thing I know, it’s two or three months after the incident, and I’ve got then-president Dibble calling me to write something retracting what I said about Dave. At first, because I was still recovering from what I had been through, I was genuinely hesitant. I didn’t know what to believe, and I said something along the lines of “I get that you guys want what you want, but don’t discard the information I sent you.” It was only at THAT point that the lie about NCRA got scrubbed from the internet, presumably thanks to action taken by them. But I felt heard, and my recovery progressed to the point where I knew what to believe, so I did what I had been asked to do.

Next thing that happened was I tried to put together an advertising campaign for the Journal of Court Reporting to the tune of thousands of dollars. The idea behind the scenes was that our antitrust training was incomplete, and I was going to make connections and start building interest in re-imagining it. For example, the NCRA says you can’t discuss rates. That’s a lie. Right on the FTC site it says trade associations can collect and distribute aggregated rate data. The ad didn’t talk about any of that, it just gave the name of the project. You can see the ad image here. That got rejected. So here’s an organization that’s resistant to telling the truth. Why? Do you think stenographers are too stupid to understand the nuance that the association doesn’t entertain rates discussions because it can lead to a lawsuit? And if you do think that way about us, why are we paying dues?

There was also a point where I nominated a stenographer from New York that has done amazing things for the field to be a FAPR. Not only was he not made a FAPR, but the rules were subsequently changed so that he would no longer be eligible. And, I, moron that I am, continued to give the NCRA a pass, and even promote them where I could.

But now the silence is broken. There have been a number of things that have come to my attention over the past week. A lot of the small stuff, I still give a pass. It’s hard to run an organization like NCRA. But the continued alienation of the organization’s strongest supporters is disgusting. I have watched with my own eyes a die-hard supporter that had just about every idea she ever had struck down. I’ve heard that a certain educator — one that has gotten graduation times down to a year in some cases and set the wheels in motion to sponsor lots of students for the convention — wasn’t acknowledged. I’ve heard that someone with a real talent for putting together events was looked at as competition and not potential collaboration. I’ve heard the qualifiers weren’t fully acknowledged. I’ve heard that a student got escorted off premises at the convention. Again and again, stories of people giving what they can and getting shit on for it. And that’s just this year. If any of you are reading, here’s a question: Why does an organization begging for talent shit on all its potential talent?

Well, I’m here to tell all of you: You are not alone. They did this shit to me too, and I tried the whole grin and bear it thing for the greater good. It’s not worth it. They don’t change direction. They just cycle to the next president and we all hope it’ll work out better this year. It doesn’t matter who’s in leadership, the organizational inertia just comes up with reasons why we can’t do whatever the members, volunteers, or probably even board members want to do.

It’s become clear to me that the direction that the NCRA is headed is going to continue alienating members, the membership is going to dwindle, eventually the digital-friendly stenographers will have enough votes to pass digital membership, and then the corporations I’ve been blogging about are going to co-opt the organization, its resources, and the brand recognition. And even if they don’t go that way — and it would be dumb for them not to — the dwindling membership is going to let all our enemies point and say “look, all their members are retiring, it must be the shortage. Guess we just have to use digital.”

At this point, the NCRA as an organization is a liability. People believe in it as a vehicle for change and they waste their time pushing for incremental changes that never really amount to anything as we continue to slide back in wages adjusted for inflation and lose jobs to other methods. The myopic tunnel vision of “sticking to what works” isn’t working in this decade. These people can all make a real difference. They’re being held back. They’re not being given the institutional support necessary to foster a healthy profession. And if that support isn’t forthcoming, then what’s the point in donating any amount of time? We’d be better off privatizing our efforts a la the Project Steno thing.

There’s a quote out there, “hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.” Maybe that’s what happened. The golden era of stenography made us top of the food chain. By the time I got here, the bulk of us had no idea how to compete. So when competition came calling, Steve Townsend basically ran circles around everybody, because he’s damn smart. This is not to say the amazing women of this profession are weak or stupid. They are this profession. But many were not set up to succeed. After all, their 100-year-old associations had made no institutional ties to help safeguard against the propaganda campaign that was sprung on them.

What more is there to say? If there’s interest in starting a new national stenographic association with safeguards against institutional inertia, then I’d be happy to put that together and seek pledges. One idea I’ve had in the past is a grand assembly type structure that can petition or even force the board / organization to act as long as it’s not a violation of law. Maybe the mere threat of more competition arising will encourage organizational change. Every person alienated will become another potential ally for me. Good luck, NCRA. I suppose this is my very public resignation from an association I held in the highest regard. I’m sorry it has to be this way, but I am a slave to my moral compass as much as anyone. I will always do my best to be fair. But what was done to me was not fair. What’s done to others isn’t fair. Silencing ourselves for some greater good that never comes isn’t right. And if any of you are feeling that, remember that this blog exists for your

Addendum:

The white paper I was upset about in this post was released in November 2023.

PSA: The NCRA Does Not Sell The Convention Attendees List. Ignore That Email You Got!

There’s an email that goes out to many NCRA members about letting them acquire the attendance list of the NCRA convention. I first came across this maybe two years ago, and when I asked the NCRA at the time, they said they don’t sell that information.

The email is making rounds again, and it’s been confirmed on social media by various court reporters that this is a frequent occurrence and that NCRA does not sell the data.

The safest thing you can do with regard to any email about the attendees list is delete it!

Addendum:

I later came across this post by NCRA President Jason Meadors.

NCRA President Jason Meadors warns court reporters about the member data scam.

A court reporter later shared the text of a communication they received from NCRA regarding this issue:

Could ProctorU Be Bad News For You, Stenographers?

While scouring social media, I came across an interesting post by Nancy Silberger. It mentioned the Better Business Bureau reviews for ProctorU.

“Last night, something compelled me to Google ‘ProctorU Reviews,’ which brought me to the BBB website. OMG, I went back over 2 years of reviews (2021-May 2023) and there was not ONE SINGLE positive review. Every time someone made a complaint about their testing experience ProctorU responded with a curt ‘it’s your fault’ type of response. Positively sickening that RTC still uses this platform. There has to be a bazillion other proctoring services out there. NCRA, RTC, WAKE UP AND LOSE THIS PLATFORM!!!” – Nancy Silberger

This is not entirely surprising. I think most people only complain to BBB when they feel mistreated by business. But some of the complaints were striking. I know the only time I used the BBB was when Naegeli threatened me. It wasn’t helpful, but it does create a record.

Anyway, people came forward to discuss their feelings and ideas regarding testing and ProctorU.

“Every single thing about how NCRA certifies professionals needs to be revamped. From the test itself reflecting how we actually do our job to professional evaluation of feasible test content and procedure to RTC and ProctorU. We’re screaming that we need to get people out there. We recruit, they go all the way through school, and they can’t get over the finish line leading some to leave the field after that long journey. We’re sure loud and quick enough to pull them in with A to Z, but COMPLETELY dead on the testing disaster.” -Dineen Squillante

What Dineen had to say really resonated with me. I personally believe AudioSync has massively deteriorated the interrupting skills of court reporters. But at this point, we have to contend with the reality that it is widely used on the job and using it effectively is part of the job for most court reporters and scopists. Even limited use would probably upgrade our pass rate significantly.

Just for the sake of completeness, I glanced over the BBB reviews too. Better Business Bureau isn’t infallible, but It’s pretty horrifying stuff for tests far less technical than ours.

“This is a scam…” -ProctorU review on Better Business Bureau.

As I was preparing for this post, a reader sent me an old Speech-to-Text Institute article with Marybeth Everhart, Realtime Coach. With hindsight, I can say that this supports the assertion that we need change. The ProctorU problems aside for a moment, I’ve been looked down on at times because I won’t refer to digitals as button pushers or recorders. Well, someone from the platform we use for our testing was pretty openly digital friendly.

Excerpt from Speech-to-Text Institute materials.

Excerpt from Speech-to-Text Institute materials demonstrating the 11,000 shortage number again.

Excerpt from the Speech-to-Text Institute materials.

And, unfortunately, as we later learned, the Speech-to-Text Institute is a propaganda outfit and corporate construct meant to manipulate the court reporting & stenotype services market. So, not to say that RTC is guilty of the same fraud I’ve alleged against Veritext et al, but for a field that used to care very much about bias or the appearance of bias, it does feel like all the major players, including ones we rely on for passing our students, are pretty biased in favor of expanding digital reporting, a position that is kind of strange to have if stenography is the gold standard and we haven’t tried other methods of alleviating the shortage, like asking lawyers to schedule with us in advance instead of the day before.

Even worse, digital proponents attack our testing procedures from the other direction, with Stenograph President Anir Dutta having stated in a letter, “…the national and state recognized process to certify a machine shorthand professional is unnecessarily arduous and, in our informed assessment, is designed to keep the number of stenographers entering the market artificially low.” I missed that line when I first reported about it, but I do find it kind of funny that while I have basically accused the companies under the Speech-to-Text Institute umbrella of manipulating the market to increase the number of court reporters create a market glut, depressing reporter incomes, they turned around and alleged that someone designed the state and national testing process to artificially reduce the number of stenographers. Since the National Court Reporters Association is basically the national test process, I think it’s safe to assume what organization they’re throwing shade on here, and it makes me rethink Anir’s NCRA comments a little bit more than I was thinking about them after he apologized to me.

In the hopes of a better tomorrow, I’m amplifying this discussion. Perhaps our next step is to have a serious look into which online proctoring companies have the best reviews and consider asking NCRA to make the switch.

NCRA Admits Court Reporter Shortage Less Severe Than Forecasted?

In a May 5, 2023 article by Tracey Read, issues with recording were addressed. Interestingly to me, there was a blurb in there about our shortage.

In a 2023 article, it is stated that according to NCRA there is -currently- a shortage of 5,500 court reporters.

You might look at that and say, “so what?”

Remember those Speech-to-Text Institute folks that I call frauds? Well, let’s just take a look at this screenshot from what I just linked.

In a projection released by the Speech-to-Text Institute years before 2023, it was stated that there would be a
gap (shortage) of 11,345 court reporters in 2023. A number that is potentially double the actual shortage.

On May 6, 2023, I reached out to NCRA to find out if this article was accurate, and I will publish the response, if any, in an addendum at the bottom of this post. If there’s no addendum, assume no response yet. I’d say check back in a week. As of now, all I’ve been told is “let us check and see where this might have come from, if anywhere, Christopher. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.”

Hopefully this makes it pretty clear why I’ve been so stuck on this issue. A shortage of 11,345 is a lot different than a shortage of 5,500, and now we have in print two very different numbers for 2023.

It seems pretty clear to me that our shortage is less severe than was forecasted, which means that it is more manageable than we have been told for about 5 years, which means that the big boxes in the Speech-to-Text Institute Bloc, having as much market share and working with as many reporters as they do, knew for a fact that the shortage was not as bad as forecasted, and perpetuated the lie anyway.

It’s bittersweet for me. I have been writing about the possibility of false claims being used to demoralize stenographers for almost half a decade, maybe longer. Many who have examined my writing and documentation over the years agree that there is something suspicious going on in stenography land. But many don’t have the time to investigate years worth of chronological discoveries and analyses. And quite frankly, after my medical issues in late 2021, it was easier for some to dismiss me entirely than to believe that such misconduct was occurring in our field.

But this should give stenographers a lot of hope. The shortage is less severe than forecasted. The NCRA is indisputably the strongest court reporting association and in the best position to address the court reporter shortage to the extent that it does exist. And as word spreads that the situation is not hopeless, as so many shills would have had my colleagues believe, we have a chance at drawing in investors to create new and better schools, and expand and improve existing programs in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

Should it turn out that this is not NCRA’s position, my past analyses about the shortage being less severe than forecasted stand. But then this shifts to a really good point: News media can make game-changing statements and be completely wrong. If we’re not funding our own media arm, we may very well be drowned by lies and incompetence. That’s the state of modern journalism. As industries grow bigger, more complex, and require more coverage, journalism is seeing an economic contraction and nearly a 10% reduction in jobs between now and 2031. Fewer journalists covering more news means we’d better start hiring some journalists if we want a fair shake. Oh, and the other side has probably been doing that for years, let’s not forget that part.

I leave my core audience with a poem.

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Addendum:

NCRA President Jason Meadors responded to my initial May 6 inquiry on May 12, 2023.

“Chris, mystery solved. That was lifted from the Ducker Report, which was before my time and has been pretty well debunked now.”

A big thanks to NCRA for the transparency and honesty.

United States Supreme Court Rules Stenographers No Longer Required in Trial Courts…*

In a stunning turn of events, Chief Justice Honorable John G. Roberts declared that stenographers will no longer be necessary for the trial courts. “I am quite sure that we can just record it. Everyone knows that if you decrease the supply of court reporting vendors by getting rid of stenographers and the demand remains the same, prices will go down. That’s Economics 101. We could save the judiciary a lot of money by turning it completely over to corporations and paying them for a deficit product. The frequency of reconstruction hearings is only going to be as often as the audio fails, which we conveniently have and collect no data for, so it must be rare. I don’t really care to read trial court records before I make my rulings anyway. I’m ready for the future.” Stenonymous.com called for national protests, leading to a large gathering of stenography supporters in New York City.

Stenonymous.com calls for national protests in a new Supreme Court ruling. Stenonymous Satire Weekends.

In other news…

Inventor invents a new stenotype containing an actual C on the keyboard. Court reporters everywhere are furious!

Jury finds Staten Island stenographer guilty of blogging while under the influence, defendant remanded. Trial to be held five years from now due to understaffing.

NCRA Spokesperson: “Our next legislative move will be universal parking passes for stenographers. Never wait for your parking to get validated again.”

Commenting on the accuracy of court records, Elvis Presley has words for stenographers: Thank you very much.

Elon Musk dictates to classroom of stenographers in training.

First raise in 30 years! Local stenographer celebrates 10-cent surprise.

Suspect asks for a lawyer dog. Lawyer dog swears he’s not a cat. Stenographers weigh in.

*None of this is true. It is part of Stenonymous Satire Weekends, a project meant to entertain the court reporting audience of this blog and catch search engine attention by integrating court reporting with current events and prominent figures. We have a corporate fraud problem in court reporting that the media won’t report on and the government won’t do anything about, so we’re reduced to fundraising until we can simply advertise deluge-style and publicly shame all the people and organizations in power who had a chance to do something and didn’t. Until that fundraising comes in, which will be sometime between now and never, Stenonymous will continue to archive, entertain, and inform with the help of its audience and the stenographers that support the blog.

The picture is from the day of the Trump arraignment in New York City, but has been modified.

Based on the most current data, at 2% of revenue, court reporters could afford an annual advertising campaign of $21.6 million (assumes $60,000 median pay x 18,000 court reporters. In some estimates, there are as many as 30,000 court reporters. BLS statistics in court reporting may be inaccurate, as the BLS continues to decrease the number of jobs despite consistently forecasting an increase in the number of jobs.

Bureau of Labor Statistics on court reporters as of April 8, 2023.

Congressman George Santos Weighs in on Court Reporting*

George Santos, nobel-prize winning congressperson who surpassed Elon Musk as the richest person in the world last Tuesday, has teamed up with Veritext to promote digital reporting. “The cure for cancer will come from digital reporting. I bet all of Veritext’s money on it.” Mr. Santos also says that the inaudibles are a necessary part of any transcript because most people don’t know what anyone is saying half the time anyway.

The Veritext CEO spoke to the Congressman about the shortage in the industry. Representative Santos replied, “don’t worry, people won’t look into it. Look at my resume.” While he advocates for digital reporting, he says “I understand the importance of digital and I can speak to it because I’m also a stenographer who’s won the National Court Reporters Association award for Fastest Fingers seven times in a row.”

Santos was later declared the new NCRA Spokesperson, and attended a masonic order dinner, trying to build a bridge between NCRA and the Illuminati.

*None of this is true. It is a satire on the lies occurring in the court reporting industry, political lies, and poking a bit of fun at how people often use or misuse NCRA’s name and cred for their own agenda. It also satirizes modern journalism. It makes fun of me too, but that’s much more subtle.

In other news, Staten Island man dressed in a peanut butter-covered raincoat was arrested. Reportedly stated to arresting officers: “I was just celebrating court reporting and captioning week!”

ENJOY YOUR WEEKEND!

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.

NCRA STRONG: The Demise of the Ducker Report…

On Monday NCRA published “From NCRA Strong: The Demise of the Ducker Report: lessons learned and successes celebrated.” This was a personal favorite of mine because it skillfully and articulately takes many of the issues we have been discussing as professionals for the last few years, wraps them up, and puts them to rest. In summary, the article lines up that Ducker is outdated and that despite some organizations stating the shortage is impossible to solve, there have been a multitude of developments in the field that have helped us along, such as NCRA A to Z, Open Steno, and Allie Hall’s creation of court reporting programs around the country. It’s an excellent read, go check it out.

Special thanks to:

Elizabeth Harvey, FAPR, RPR

Sue Terry, FAPR, RPR, CRR, CRC

Lilian Freiler, FAPR, RMR, CMRS

Michelle Kirkpatrick, RDR, CRR, CRC

P.S. I had some inspiring words for NYSCRA group members that I’d like to share with everyone.

Christopher Day’s remarks on the Demise of Ducker post by NCRA Strong

NCRA Net Assets Dwarf Competitors, Digital Court Reporting Bad for Business

I’ve raised questions about the Speech-to-Text Institute’s data and some companies’ blind reliance on that data. Today I’ve got to raise the fact that, if we compare net assets on 2020 tax returns and information found on ProPublica for NCRA, STTI, AAERT, and NVRA, it seems like NCRA is the clear leader at over $6 million, and its nearest “competitor,” AAERT, had about $217k. STTI came in dead last, more than $100,000 in the red. This doesn’t even account for the myriad court reporting associations and nonprofits across the country and the money that goes into them.

It still remains a serious question why the public and court administrators would rely on the word of an organization that doesn’t seem to have the monetary support needed to address the court reporter shortage in California, let alone America. Think about it. If you want to raise a workforce of possibly 20,000 professionals, who do you turn to, the organization with $6 million or the organization that’s in the red and being kept afloat by some undiscovered means?

There also remains a question about the severity of the shortage. As told by the document linked above, it states that over 50% of California courts have reported they are unable to routinely cover non-mandated case types. California’s shortage was forecasted to be the worst in the country, about 20x worse than many other states. If around 50% of California courts are having trouble, it would follow that somewhere around 2.5% would be the average across the country. Devising relocation incentives could pull more people to California and solve the problem.

This has implications for the big business bosses and the small businesses they bully. They’re going to have to spend a whole lot of money to match stenographic initiatives. Eventually shareholders are going to ask why these businesses are swimming against the direction of the market. Why would you spend time and attention trying to cultivate a professional community in digital court reporting when one clearly exists in the stenographic community? Why would you aggravate the talent/labor until it starts discussing things like misclassification, pay, and working conditions?

Stenonymous reporting live from the dead internet.

NCRA 2020: $6,293,223 net assets.

AAERT 2020: $217,609 net assets.

NVRA 2020: $122,098 net assets.

STTI 2020: -$119,169 net assets.

STTI-2020 Download

NCRA: Pay Rates Often Lead to Replacing Stenographic Court Reporters with Digital Methods

In a press release yesterday, the National Court Reporters Association acknowledged that different markets are having different experiences when it comes to court reporter or stenographer shortage. NCRA President Jason Meadors is quoted as saying “Claims of a court reporter shortage are all too often a matter of geography and market. When courthouses pay and offer benefits competitively, they become fully staffed, and litigants are not faced with the choice of paying market rates to have the best system available or rely upon what the courthouse is willing to provide for keeping the record.”

The press release is concise and worth a read. It gets across some important ideas, such as stenography being modern, the gold standard, and acknowledges in its own way that economics plays a role in where court reporters are available. Very similar to the realizations I had when I saw that many reporters in New York City were working 30 years behind inflation while agencies were crying shortage.

This could not come at a better time. The courts in California just more or less declared that funding was not the issue, with some screenshots below. With our profession setting the stage to dispel the misinformation spread by the Speech-to-Text Institute, there’s a real chance at educating court administrators as to the controversy and issue (ultimately, if they want there to be court reporters, they have to stand behind us and help keep the demand steady. If they continue piecemeal replacement of us across the country, there will be fewer of us to hire. It’s an unfortunate elephant-in-the-room scenario. It’s a self-fulfilling prophesy.)

We’ve also passed a milestone here on Stenonymous. Many of the claims I’ve made and articles I’ve published are over a year old or rapidly approaching such, and the statute of limitations on defamation in my state is a year. The best defense of the corporate juggernauts against my claims of fraud was to ignore me. At the very least, I hope some of the things I did help many of you connect, educate, and advocate without fear. It really does appear to me that the corporate powers that be are milking the shortage for the purpose of selling digital reporting and the equipment associated. That’s not the easiest problem to deal with, but we are a strong profession, and we’re on the road to dealing with it.

I cannot claim to always agree with NCRA, but it remains a pillar of our profession and today I am very proud to be a member. Thank you to our president, Jason Meadors, for speaking up and speaking out.