But this isn’t about me. This is about the brave women and men in California, through CCRA President Brooke Ryan, finally ready to stand up and say enough is enoughinstead of watching the public sector use the excuse fed to them by the STTI Bloc to vaporize our jobs and the jobs that future students would hold.
CCRA Urges Reversal of L.A. Superior Court’s Unlawful Electronic Recording Order
September 5, 2024
CCRA condemns a recent decision by Los Angeles Superior Court’s Presiding Judge to authorize electronic recording across a broad range of case types. CCRA argues that this move creates an unreliable record and is part of a broader issue of a manufactured reporter shortage created because of past layoffs and a flawed hiring process. CCRA is calling for the immediate reversal of the order and is prepared to collaborate with the reporters’ union to work with the court and with the Legislature to address this illegal action and improve reporter staffing.
The full letter that CCRA sent to Presiding Judge Samantha P. Jessner of the Los Angeles Superior Court is below:
September 5, 2024 Presiding Judge Samantha P. Jessner,
Los Angeles Superior Court,
600 S Commonwealth Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90005
Dear Judge Jessner,
The California Court Reporters Association (CCRA) is deeply troubled by the Los Angeles Superior Court’s Presiding Judge’s unlawful action today, authorizing electronic recording in a whole range of case types. This order, disseminated by the Court Executive Officer, is in violation of California law and will create chaos for litigants and continue to feed into a broken system inside the courts of disparity of justice between the haves and the have-nots.
Through this action, the Presiding Judge and the Court Executive Officer will create an expressway to unreliable electronic recording transcripts without proper steps to bring in a live, licensed court reporter.
The California Court Reporters Association requests that the Court immediately rescind this unlawful order and instead meet with the recognized labor union representing court reporters and we here at CCRA to discuss strategies to increase the placement and hiring of official court reporters.
L.A. Superior Court leaders have been warned repeatedly by their court reporter employees, unions, and by we here at CCRA that their hiring process and previous layoffs of hundreds of court reporters would eventually lead to their inability to provide litigants with a licensed court reporter and a verbatim transcript.
We wholeheartedly believe that this was the Court’s goal all along—to create a situation where they insist they must use recording machines because they can’t find any court reporters. The LA Superior Court has repeatedly and systematically rejected qualified, licensed, long-time reporter applicants in an effort to feed into their narrative of a “shortage.” Make no mistake: The “shortage” is manufactured, and LA Superior Court has been the most prominent player in that long game of attempting to phase out court reporters in favor of substandard electronic recording.
We here at the California Court Reporters Association are willing and ready to meet with LA Superior Court leadership at any time to help resolve this issue.
Sincerely, Brooke Ryan, CCRA President
(Images below)
Posted by the California Court Reporters AssociationLetter from the California Court Reporters Association to Judge Samantha P. Jessner
The only question I had upon reading a recent article about LA was whether David Slayton, Los Angeles county executive/clerk of court for the Superior Court of Los Angeles County is ignorant or a talented liar.
It’s not too farfetched, at this point in history, to believe that maybe some people in official positions are ignoring the reality of the court reporter shortage fraud and the indelible fact that private money was used to exaggerate and exacerbate the stenographer shortage. Arizona officials more or less ignored us. Officials from New York and the FTC have ignored us. The attorney general of California ignored us. Texas and California both ignore their own licensing laws in favor of screwing the working reporter. Everyone in government seems to believe that if a fact is ignored it becomes less factual.
And in fact, that’s what the sham of a journalist, Makenna Sievertson, seems to believe as well, with her headline that pretends that court officials really are doing everything in their power to help the shortage. I have no problem, at this point in history, putting it out there that any journalist or outlet that ignores the court reporter shortage fraud in favor of the shortage narrative is a corporate shill unfit to publish fiction, let alone news. Many of my contemporaries would cringe at me making an enemy of media. But I have news for you: Media has been our enemy for years. I’ve spoken to several journalists and they either don’t run the story (understandable), publish about the shortage and omit the fraud claims (questionable), or engage in “journalistic equalizing” at the expense of the truth (unforgivable). I’m fed up. I’m done playing games. Any journalist that fails to mention the fraud that the whole world can Google will find themselves deservedly on the receiving end of my ire. (Google: Veritext fraud, court reporter shortage fraud, digital court reporting scam, or Speech-to-Text Institute.)
This isn’t particularly hard. The government doesn’t have to broadcast that there was a fraud perpetrated. All they have to do is look at the cold, hard truth. A shortage was forecasted over a decade ago. Several large corporations got together behind the Speech-to-Text Institute about 5 years ago and republished modern materials about the shortage forecast without adjusting for all the things we’ve done since to address the shortage, such as the A to Z program, Project Steno, and Open Steno. Then, after being publicly accused of fraud, their frontman Jim Cudahy jumped ship, the organization was sued, their website was shut down, and Stenograph’s then-president publicly distanced himself from the organization. Conveniently documented in real time by yours truly.
And so, to David Slayton and all of the other sand spiders with their fingers in their ears, how about you spend a little less time running to the media about how bad the shortage is, which is obviously a bid to push us out for your beloved audio recorders, pick up the damn phone, and use your office to get some attention on the obvious fraud committed that’s making your recruitment efforts so hard? I’m sure you’ll concede that there ARE executive agencies meant to deal with such things. I’m sure you’ll concede that those agencies DO give more weight to complaints from people like YOU than people like me. And unless you have a financial interest in those recording companies, there’s no real reason for you not to step in and do the right thing other than your own cowardice.
I’m not alone. There are people like me, like Protect Your Record Project in California, Jackie Mentecky in Florida, and all of their supporters, who have raised concerns about the validity of the shortage claims as they were presented to the public by these private equity corporations I blog about.
Let me make something clear. People like me — that is to say, average working people and their families — have the power to take on organizations with millions of dollars. You deny the truth at your own peril. At the end of the day, people are not stupid, and they will see through your shallow words about people’s families for the fact that you’ve done precious little to make a difference for those same families. And when they see through that, perhaps you should not be allowed to keep your position, and be replaced by someone with the mettle required to do right and be good.
And to the court reporters and average people that want to get serious about engaging with professional liars in government and beyond, consider a donation to Stenonymous today via the donation box on the front page, Venmo @Stenonymous, or PayPal / Zelle at ChristopherDay227@gmail.com. At the end of the day, my effectiveness is linked to your financial support, information you share, and the sharing of my work. American journalism and media is very much pay to play, and I think it’s about time we get in the game and win. If not for ourselves, then for the many millions of people whose views are not represented by corporate media. What we are writing is a blueprint for many to follow. Where that will lead?
First interesting thing to note, the website doubles down on the shortage narrative of the Speech-to-Text Institute Bloc, the group of corporations I identified as having joined in a fraud.
The Coalition to Capture the Record doubles down on the court reporter shortage fraud despite a president of the largest court reporting association in the country admitting Ducker was debunked and a committee of the National Court Reporters Association more or less describing it as defunct.
There’s also an implication that it’ll bring down the cost of litigation. This long-running lie was called into question by a 2009 study.
So once again, it’s that same behavior we saw Speech-to-Text Institute engaging in. “The shortage is the shortage and we can’t beat it so we must go digital.” This is being done despite the overwhelming evidence that localized shortages can be beat. For example, in New York City, a localized Bronx shortage was recently plugged in our courts. Turns out when we actually try to fill these spots, we’re successful, and the political machinery that stops us from filling spots is the problem.
There’s also a pull from STAR’s playbook, the organization a lot of the fraudsters ran to in order to legitimize their positions again (they also went AAERT). They call for unity.
If digital court reporters and stenographers are equal, why aren’t they paid the same? I know that bothers my audience. But let’s ask that question out loud and often, because eventually digital court reporters will start asking for more — and then this whole song and dance becomes moot, because it’s about replacing our workforce with a workforce that’s easier to abuse and control. It has never, ever been about shortage.
Ever.
This next gem led me to conclude that this is not a serious organization, but a potential propaganda front.
Why does the Coalition to Capture the Record care about whether digital court reporters will replace stenographers?
Think about it. If your mission is access to justice, what does anything else matter? All this stuff about shortage and “we won’t replace you”, and all that nonsense, it’s not a message you would write to people interested in access. It’s a message you would write to stenographers you are trying to placate so that they don’t take a stand against their own elimination. A narrative to disarm and demoralize. “Give up, there is nothing you can do, join us.”
I believe in access to justice. I signed up for more information. And with time and evidence, my views may change.
But does anyone see what I’m seeing?
P.S.
I’m going to write about something on my mind. You’re not expected to read it.
The Max Azzarello thing happened outside my courthouse. Luckily for me, I wasn’t there, but I did see a brief video clip.
He’s been described as this gentle soul, intelligent guy that went downhill after his mother, who he had a close relationship with, died.
I wondered how many people might say the same about me, if I passed away. Admittedly, my relationship with my mother was not close, but we loved each other deeply. But how many of you would come out of the woodwork to call me a conspiracy theorist in my death? And despite not a peep while I’m alive and well to defend myself and my beliefs.
Of course, I’m never going to hurt myself. It’s not going to happen. Maybe that’ll be the deciding factor. And should anything suspicious occur, I hope my loved ones don’t accept a false narrative.
There’s also the fact that what I write about was real and what he wrote about was a distorted version of the truth. Yes, big money interests are using their wealth and power to influence markets, governments, and consumers. Yes, the government has serious problems because it’s woefully ill equipped to deal with lawbreaking businesses in the quantity and on the scale that they exist today.
But I can’t help but empathize. I know how it feels to scream into the void and hear nothing back.
If someone finds this corner of the internet and you’re in a dark place…
…I’ve been there too.
Hurting yourself isn’t the way. Certainly not self-immolation. The future will be brighter with you in it.
A better tomorrow needs builders. If your story ends here, how can the world change for the better?
Stenonymous shares the Kings County District Attorney Stenographer job.
P.S.
You’d think that all these folks crying shortage would come to the man who spoke against it. No. It’s other stenographers that come to me to share with you. But you know what? For all my generalized complaints about the system, I want to help make it work. It’s a good job, folks. Go for it. You might be pleasantly surprised. And if you don’t want to work for Eric Gonzalez, there’s always the New York State Unified Court System.
Thank you for the donations in the last month.
And thank you for sending me information. You make Stenonymous work.
Double entendre. 😇
Addendum:
The previous version of this post had a fabricated image.
A valued commentator says this salary is too low and they should do things more like they do on the West Coast.
We were all told realtime is the future, realtime is valuable, realtime is job security. Manufacturers, agencies, associations — everybody knew realtime was king. There were only fringe idiots like that Christopher Day guy who pointed out that if you trade away all the non-realtime work to the digital folks then the realtime reporters become more easily replaceable by virtue of having no political or pushback power. Everyone pointed and laughed at his stupid ideas and that was the end of that.
Well now I’m showing you in print that they intend to equalize you with digital court reporting. Stenograph had also made public statements that indicated as much.
I read up on enough law, science, and business to put these allegations in print and make it easy to Google the court reporter shortage fraud / Veritext fraud. The corporate fraudsters didn’t really have an answer for it. They got caught with their pants down, gave up on Speech-to-Text Institute, and ran over to STAR.
My position is growing stronger with time. My current understanding of defamation law is that pretty much anything in my state published over a year ago can never be challenged. That significantly diminishes my formerly overblown fear of a BS lawsuit. These companies have allowed publication of things that describe their fraud and lies to the public for over two years.
Which also means we’ve entered a period in court reporting history where the largest court reporting firm in the country was accused of fraud and didn’t care enough about its reputation among stenographers enough to do or say anything about it in the middle of what it outwardly professed as a massive shortage. Doesn’t seem to make much sense, does it? I wonder who could have seen this coming…
Happy Thanksgiving to all of you.
Addendum:
A Stenonymous reader gave me permission to repost their social media post.
– – –
After this post was launched, a person claiming to work in Veritext sales wrote to me, in pertinent part,
“Hi Christopher. I work for Veritext in sales. Good morning. In re your most recent post about DRs providing real-time, I can assure you of the following:
Veritext’s technology, since our DR software/hardware implementation is proprietary, as of today is not capable of providing real-time.
As someone who works in sales, I can assure that I nor any of my colleagues are telling attorneys that DRs can provide real-time. First, it’s not true and second the attorneys who want real-time also tend to want stenographers.
I cannot speak to why the website says that, but I’d imagine it was either put together by someone high up on totem pole who knows very little about the industry, or a third-party who knows even less.
Overall, your concerns about real-time being possible via DRs are real—it’s just the nature of technology. However, as of today, it’s not possible nor are we actively selling a service that can’t be provided.”
Saw the claim that there’s a nationwide deficit of 5,500 court reporters in the Brooklyn Eagle. As anybody that obsessively refreshes my website knows, we’ve seen this before. Past NCRA President Meadors stated earlier this year that that number was lifted from the Ducker Report in a different article. He also commented that the Ducker Report “has been pretty well debunked now.” I recall that NCRA Strong mentioned something about Ducker too.
The Speech-to-Text Institute made the claim that we’d have a shortage of 11,000 by now.
A Speech-to-Text Institute graphic that Stenonymous badly cropped and uses to explain that the court reporter shortage was artificially inflated by a consortium of businesses behind a sham nonprofit.
Oh, I’m sorry, 11,345. And yes, I see the 5,500 number in the 2018 slot. Raises questions. Are journalists ignoring the 11,345 number because they just don’t know about it, they know it’s inaccurate, or some other reason? And why does our shortage constantly make the news? And why is news about a shortage juicier than news about a corporate rigging of an entire market?
That aside, does anyone get why I called Speech-to-Text Institute, Veritext, and U.S. Legal Support fraudsters yet?
Most of the individual people in these organizations are just people doing their jobs or trying to make the most profit. That’s not a bad thing. But someone, somewhere along the way, decided it would be a good idea to lie about these numbers and fool students, jobseekers, consumers, workers, small business owners, associations, court administrators, and the general public. And certainly at this point these organizations have chosen to ignore my letters and activism despite a known propensity of the big boxes to harass court reporters for what they post on Facebook. I feel like, law in general, we look at people’s actions to tell us their intent. So even in some bizarro world where it wasn’t their intent to rig the market and jump their revenue like $500 million, it’s not like they stopped once they knew what they were doing.
When big men in this industry are threatened by powerful women, they start saying words like slander and defamation. When I do it? Carte blanche. Checkmate, sexists. I might have some partial face blindness going on, but I see you for the cowards you are. I’m on their side.
And, in a literary, figurative, nonviolent, and patriotic sense,
I believe this can be part of a larger series with help from readers like you. Any money sent to Stenonymous during the lifetime of this ad campaign (until September 11, 2023), will be designated toward developing and running more advertising to reduce the shortage. Stenonymous has put out tons of information with regard to advertising metrics and the fact that solvable localized shortages were painted as an unsolvable national problem. Up until now, a lot of my advertising was aimed at attorneys to educate them on the issues we’re facing in the field. But the objective of solving the localized shortages still remains. For an example of how this plays out in the real world, I know for a fact that right now the Bronx is hurting for court reporters more than any other borough in New York City. Meanwhile, at least one freelancer in the private sector reported they were told there were too many reporters and not enough work. So even in individual cities, we’re seeing uneven shortage impacts.
Please consider donating to Stenonymous today to end localized shortages. Based on this ad’s current stats, I expect it will cost $150 per 1,000 engagements, $30 per 1,000 impressions. With the help and support of people like you, I believe we can bring those numbers down to half of what they are today. To put these numbers into perspective, about $30,000 would get the ad in front of a million people, and about $150,000 would get a million people to like or share it if progress is linear. $30,000 is more or less the equivalent of every court reporter throwing down a dollar. We don’t need that kind of money to make an impact, but raising more money will make a bigger impact than the one I will make by myself. If you donate, please email in or comment below what geographical area(s) you feel need the most advertising, as it will help us improve audience targeting on future ads.
Stenonymous can be sent money through PayPal or Zelle (ChristopherDay227@gmail.com), Venmo @Stenonymous, the donation box at the front page of Stenonymous.com, or the special donation box I’m setting up below. Even if you cannot contribute any amount of money, please share this on social media so that it can get in front of the people that can.
Due to an oversight on my end about how Facebook presents information, I mistakenly believed the Cost Per Mille was lower than it currently is. I will have more accurate data and an explanation by the end of the campaign. The overall principle still stands that community support will make or break this campaign.
Cassandra Caldarella reached out to me a while ago with some information about California. Given my relative lack of familiarity with California’s court reporting laws and statistics, the interaction was very welcome. I’ve said it many times, but I would be nowhere without information sent in by readers.
The first thing I was told was that in 2013 there were 7,100 active CSRs in California and that there are now 6,580 CSRs in 2023, a loss of 520, or about 8%. A loss of about 50 per year, or 0.7% of that 7,100 total. The Ducker Report told us something like 70% of reporters would be retiring between 2013 and 2023, so about 2.3% a year. 4.67% per year if you count from 2018, when the shortage was supposed to start getting bad. What does all this mean? The California shortage may be half as bad as it was forecasted to be.
An explanation of CSR license numbers from Cassandra Caldarella.
We can pull straight from Ducker to confirm something is off.
Ducker Report, Forecasted Supply for CA in 2018, 6,110.
There was a 6,110 supply of stenographers forecasted in 2018, and it was supposed to get worse and worse every year until 2018. If it is accurate that there are now 6,580, then we are doing much better than the forecast.
Cassandra went on to explain that these were not straight losses and that there were a lot of new CSRs coming in.
I was then given a yearly breakdown of out-of-state CA CSR licensees. The average before COVID was about 10 per year. 2020 to 2023, that jumps to about 16.
Out-of-state California CSR licenares per year according to Cassandra Caldarella.
I did go snooping for these numbers, because I don’t like to publish without some fact checking, and I did find at least one piece of information from SB662 that seems to contradict or call into question these numbers.
2022, 5,605 CSRs according to SB662 bill text. 4.,829 listed an address in California. 8,004 in 2000. 7,503 in 2010. 6,085 in 2020.
That’s a much more grim outlook. But perhaps it’s just market forces at work? Unless 30% of the workforce has been replaced by digital, it means that the demand for court reporters is simply lower than it once was or that there was not enough demand in the market for those 8,004 CSRs. A lot of people believe in the self-correction of markets. Why is our labor market any different? We could blame it on government regulation. Then again, we could also blame it on the larger corporations that stood by and did basically nothing for half a decade. If there was a retirement cliff, they sure weren’t worried about it, and I think that says a lot.
Let’s work with the most relevant numbers presented here. 7,503 in 2010. 1,418 drop from 2010 to 2020. A loss of about 19%, 1.7% a year. Still below the 2.3% to 4.7% it was supposed to be, but not quite as rosy as the 0.7% figure I was hoping for.
I’d really like to get the discussion going here. Are there more accurate direct sources I’ve missed? Has anybody run these numbers and come up with similar results? Have I gotten something completely wrong?
The comments are open.
Addendum:
Some edits were done to the images and text in this post after it went live. Subsequently, I was sent a spreadsheet that purports to show about 6,849 California CSRs active as of May 10, 2023. So, after seeing that, I think it’s reasonable to conclude that we are in much better shape than was forecasted.
How court reporting companies are getting away with charging top-shelf prices for undervalued work…
The overpriced court reporter page is something that comes up occasionally in legal circles. All through my early career, law firm owners I worked with mentioned how their firms were stuck with expensive court reporter bills. As a young stenographic court reporter, I was paid very little, and later learned that court reporters in my city were about 30 years behind inflation. This set me down a path of skepticism when it came to what court reporters are told about themselves, their industry, and the public’s perception of them. How could lawyers be paying so much when I was making so little and such a large part of the transcript creation was on me?
Years later, as it turned out, some of the largest court reporting companies would get together using a nonprofit called the Speech-to-Text Institute (STTI). That nonprofit would go on to mislead consumers about the stenographer shortage to artificially increase demand for digital court reporting. Tellingly, while a U.S. Legal Support representative had no problem using the word “libel” on one of the female members of my profession, USL and the other multimillion dollar corporations never dared utter a word about my eventual fraud allegations. The companies wanted to trick consumers into believing stenographers were unavailable due to shortage and force digital court reporting on them, where matters are recorded and transcribed.
This set off alarm bells in the world of court reporting. Stenotype manufacturing giant, Stenograph, also represented in STTI’s leadership, shifted from supporting realtime stenographic reporters to shoddy service, and began to call its MAXScribe technology realtime. Realtime, as many attorneys know, is a highly trained subset of court reporting that often comes with a premium. These bait-and-switch tactics on the digital court reporter side of the industry caused a nonprofit called Protect Your Record Project to spring up and begin educating attorneys on what was happening in our field. But as of today, the nonprofit has not reached a level of funding that would allow it to advertise these issues on a national scale — this blog’s in the same boat.
So as more of the workforce is switched to digital reporters / recorders and transcribers, we’re seeing companies use influencers and other media to lure transcribers in for low pay. In short, digital court reporting is now synonymous with side hustle. These companies are going to take the field of skilled reporters that law firms and courts know and love, replace them with transcribers, and go on charging the same money. For the stenographer shortage, these folks were dead silent for the better part of a decade. Now that they need transcribers to replace us, they’re going all out to recruit.
Shopify talks about transcribing as a side hustle.Shopify talks about transcribing as a side hustle.
“What do I care?” That’s what a lot of lawyers and paralegals might be asking at this point. Well, I may not write as well as Alex Su, but I’ll do my best here. First, there are egalitarian concerns. In the Testifying While Black study, stenographers only scored 80% accuracy on the African American Vernacular English dialect. This was widely reported in the media, but what was lost by the media was the reveal of pilot study 1, which showed everyday people only transcribe with an accuracy of about 40% (e226). When we’re talking about replacing court reporters with “side hustle technology,” we’re talking about a potential 50% drop in accuracy and a reduction in court record quality for minority speakers, something courts are largely unaware of. According to the Racial Disparities in Automatic Speech Recognition study, automation isn’t coming to save us either. Voice writing is the best bet for the futurists, and it’s being completely ignored by these big companies.
There are also security concerns. When we’re talking about utilizing transcribers, we’re talking about people that have an economic incentive to sell any private data they might gain from the audio or transcript. If transcription is outsourced, a bribe as low as $600 might be enough to get people acting unethically. Digital court reporting companies have already shown they’re not protective of people’s data — in fact, companies represented in the Speech-to-Text Institute. This also leads to questions about remedies for suspected omissions or tampering. Would you rather subpoena one local stenographer or teams of transcribers, some possibly outside of the jurisdiction?
Finally, there’s an efficiency issue with digital court reporting. Turnaround times can be much slower. Self-reported, it can take up to 6 hours to transcribe 1 hour of audio. By comparison, 1 hour of proceedings can take a qualified stenographer 1 to 2 hours to transcribe. That’s 3 to 6 times faster. Everyone here knows stenographers aren’t perfect and that backlogs happen. Now imagine a world where the backlog is 3 to 6 times what it is today. In one case, a transcript took about two months to deliver. If we’re going to hire teams of transcribers to do the work of one stenographic court reporter, aren’t we going backwards?
Consumers are the ones with the power here. They can demand stenographers, utilize companies that aren’t economically incentivized to lie to them, and spread awareness to other consumers. Consumers, lawyers and court administrators, decide the future. Knowing what you do now, do you want a court reporter or a side hustler at your next deposition or criminal case?
—————————-
Written by Christopher Day, a stenographic court reporter in New York City that has been serving the legal community since 2010. He is also a former board member of the New York State Court Reporters Association and a former volunteer for the National Court Reporters Association STRONG Committee. Day also authors the Stenonymous blog, the industry’s leading independent publication on court reporting media, information, data, analyses, satire, and archiving of current events. He also appeared on VICE with regard to the Testifying While Black study and fiercely advocated for more linguistics training for court reporters in and around New York State.
Donations for the blog will help run advertising for this article and others like it, as well as pay for more journalists and investigators. If you would like to donate, you may use the donation box on the front page of Stenonymous.com, PayPal or Zelle ChristopherDay227@gmail.com, or Venmo @Stenonymous. Growing honest media to combat misconceptions in and about our marketplace is the premier path to a stronger profession and ultimately better service to the legal community.
A posse ad esse.
Addendum:
By sheer coincidence, an article on the side hustle was released the same day as my post. NCRA STRONG’s Lisa Migliore Black and Kim Falgiani really hit it out of the park with this one. Apparently FTR and Rev say they have security in place to prevent sensitive data from being shared. But FTR is known for selling “deficit products,” and Rev is known for its massive security breach. So check out the article by Chelsea Simeon linked above and enjoy!
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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EU SEUPL PHREU SHAEURD T- W- -T WORLD FPLT
EU TPHAOU TPHOT W-R T- HRED RBGS
OEPBL THAT WHAOEUT TPHRAG SHUD TPHOT -B UPB TPURLD FPLT
SKP SHUD KWES A RAOEUZ RBGS
AZ THE OFPB TKO RBGS
HRAOBG TPOR TRAO*UT SKPUL TPAOEUPBD TK-RB
TAES HRAOBG -G TPOR U TAO FPLT
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.
