Generally the blog’s a source of information that readers can count on to present my honest findings on whatever topic I’m writing about. As news rolls in, I report it. But what to do when that news dries up for a bit? That’s a question I’ve had for a long time. After all, in my view, anything that drives up eyes on our profession is going to eventually bring opportunities. So, to capture those opportunities, I’m willing to put on this loud persona and reach out into the world. Part of that is creating engaging content that might pop into real world searches and get people wondering “what the heck is this?”
So the perfect idea was born. Satire weekends. Once a week I can put out fake headlines or blurbs that the audience will get a laugh at and the search engines will hopefully capture. It’s a no-cost way of reaching more people that’s worth exploring. It’s also a low-risk way of poking the bear, since if the STTI Bloc didn’t sue or threaten to sue over allegations of fraud, they’re definitely not going to do anything over a little humor.
U.S. Government declares a state of emergency, digital court reporting big box corporations not making enough profit. Government intervention is needed to help control a market of 30,000 rabid stenographers, says Veritext CEO*, award-winning pen shorthand writer and congressperson, George Santos.
*Satire comparing the bold lies of George Santos with the lies of the Veritext company.
That’s a good peek at what I want to do. I believe that humor might be a real winning ticket.
Local stenographic cult leader arrested during educational webinar while telling followers “when in doubt, stroke it out.”
Speech-to-Text Institute experts that have never court reported speak out on the future of court reporting.
Truckload of stenotypes stolen by Staten Island man, police investigation ongoing.
Truckload of stenotypes stolen by Staten Island man, police investigation ongoing. (Stenonymous Satire)
It seems like a good time to reveal how I view Stenonymous in our little “ecosystem.” Yes, there’s news, entertainment, commentary, opinion, and creative writing thrown in there. It’s an information relay, bulletin board, and search engine activism machine. I want to use it to help everybody, but it’ll only be as useful as people allow it to be. So here are some pointers for people that want to self-promote or get an article in.
1. Self-promotion is easiest through the Stenonymous Facebook Group or the newly created Stenonymous subreddit. I do not censor self-promotion, I welcome it. I envision a future where associations, nonprofits, and businesses use these spaces to get word out about their events and deals. I feel so strongly about it that I’d probably even let members of the STTI Bloc post to it. If I’m going to parade around as court reporting’s “shock jock” and free speech champion, you bet I’m going to invite others. The only rule I have is please don’t spam my spaces. Once or twice a week, feel free to come in and promote, but if we’re getting blasted with the same thing day after day, people won’t feel informed, they’ll just leave, and I want them to feel informed.
2. Information. A lot of people pass me information or documents. Please let me know if you want them to be shared. Believe it or not, a lot of people pass me stuff they don’t want shared, and I generally honor their request. The only thing I’d say is if you pass me something that strongly supports my fraud claim against STTI Bloc, expect that to be shared. Also, if you email me, let me know if you want the email deleted after our exchange.
3. Stories. When passing me information, if you want a story or an article done on it, tell me. Explain to me the who, what, when, where, why, how. Let me know if you want to be named or anonymous. Give me the information I need to actually write something. If you just pass me something with no or very little explanation / no leads, I’m not going to write about it, because let’s face it, I have a full-time job and I just don’t have the time to chase shadows of stories. I apologize for the times when people DO give me adequate information and I still can’t come up with something, but I have an answer for that too.
4. Self-publishing. I can actually connect people as contributors to this blog. All I need is an email address. If I connect you as a contributor, you could write your own story and I can publish it on Stenonymous. My only real rule is it has to be something related to court reporting in some way, even if it’s an abstract concept or a new perspective. I welcome opinions contrary to mine. If I’m dragging my feet on something you deem very important, why not help me get it out there? The rule I’ll put on this is try to make whatever it is worth reading or of value. Just remember there are subscribers to the blog and they don’t want garbage in their inboxes.
That’s it. Through information dispersal, I feel we become a stronger community. We will have our disagreements, our personality conflicts, and the problems that come along with a free-information ethos, but human intelligence is on a bell curve, which means we’re all pretty close in intelligence and that given the same information, many of us will come to the same conclusions, hopefully the correct conclusions, whatever they may be.
I’m easy to reach. Just fill out the message box on the front page of Stenonymous.com or write to Chris@stenonymous.com.
Al Betz is a man that’s all about sharing stories. Not long ago, through his amazing work with Stenographers World, he helped me share some of the research I was doing on events in our field of court reporting and captioning. I’ve come to find out that he started helping people preserve their life stories over 30 years ago. This has now led to a company and product devoted to helping business owners of all sizes tell their story and build their brand. This is what he had to tell me about it:
“Whether you are a solo practitioner with a small client base, or an agency with a significant client base, you have a story to tell that everyone in your sphere of influence wants to hear. Recollections is a Division of Outfluence, LLC. Recollections is a personal history/marketing company. Beginnings is a product designed to tell the story of your business. The applications of your story are many, and Recollections will guide you into the marketing of your story literally for years to come. Visit us at www.recollections.store where you can learn more about us and purchase Beginnings. At that point we will contact you to prepare for and conduct our interview.”
Every last one of us has a story to tell, and the Beginnings product is on sale right now. If you’ve ever needed some marketing help, now is the time to reach out and get it.
Of course, my personal thanks to Al for sharing this. A lot of my writing is geared toward getting reporters to think competitively in our modern market. That’s a nice ideal. But it’s businesses like his that help build the skills needed and craft the right message. Your message. Go check it out.
I was approached via LinkedIn by an employee of JurisQ. They claim that they have an opportunity for stenographers to gain a side income by recommending JurisQ to lawyers. I asked for something to give my Stenonymous audience more info, and I got this:
“An opportunity for Stenographers to become a JurisQ Brand Ambassador, enhancing income by thousands of dollars a month.
Stenographers work with many different attorneys. JurisQ has an amazing service for them to convert more clients. All you would have to do is recommend us to them and you earn a commission! It is as simple as that!
Our Company, JurisQ, produces Legal Brand Videos and Legal FAQ Videos discussing a legal topic that is relevant to attorney’s practice area.
The Videos are used to enhance law firm’s Website Blog, Social Media and YouTube.
Obviously, there are some things my audience should keep aware of. They’re claiming this can become a fairly lucrative side income. But you really want to focus on how that’s going to happen if you reach out to them. Don’t let anybody make promises they don’t keep. Feel free to report back to me if there are unkept promises. But I have no indication they’re anything but above board.
Of course, if other brands have opportunities or discounts for court reporters and stenographers, feel free to reach out to me. It would be a dream for the companies in the field to realize what a boon independent speech is to the industry and offer stuff to my audience. The site draws thousands of visitors each month. In a field of 30,000, it serves as a communication gateway to get important information to stenographers and court reporters. If brands start commingling with the whole loud media personality thing I’ve got going on, it’s a real chance to enhance the economic ecosystem in court reporting & stenotype services and bring passionate individuals into the field.
I’ve been experimenting with creating text-based choices games. I’ve thrown together a joke game for court reporters everywhere that accurately captures the experience of being a court reporter. It should be playable on any browser. I have not tested it on mobile yet.
There is actually a real-world component that you can teach students using this game. Mathematically, the rate impacts your earnings more than the appearance fee (unless your appearance fee is crazy high.) This is likely why agencies favor bonuses instead of raising rates. If you play the game without cheating, though it’s very exaggerated, you’ll quickly find that the rate matters a lot more than the number of pages you do. This is true in the real world also based on math I’ve done in the past.
I may create other small projects, especially if people have interesting ideas. For those of you that want to become creators, I’m using Twine. I’m working on a much larger fiction game based around a sci-fi version of court reporting that will test the audience’s decision making and present uncomfortable scenarios, so I’m hopeful that when that’s done it becomes another piece of media we have out there in the world.
I also am considering exploring utilizing this technology for creating practice written knowledge tests. As some of you know, I created a computer program that generated practice tests for New York’s civil service exam, but that goes underutilized because it requires people to install Python 3 to use it. This requires no installation. It would be easier to create such a thing with some help, so if you’re someone that wants to see that dream realized, hit me up, or whatever the kids say these days. Chris@Stenonymous.com
Please feel free to spread this around or send me ideas. I’m a one-man team, currently trying to expand to a two-man team, so I can’t make too many promises. But I think the possibilities are endless. I planned and wrote this game in about 2 hours. I’m sure that with enough time and attention, much higher quality stuff is doable.
Funniest song you’ll hear all day, sent to me by a friend and mentor. I later learned it was also posted by the best union president I know.
This is for all the court reporters that have been asked out by somebody on your case. I have to highly recommend it for the laughs and the surprise twist at the end. I find this very creative. Good delivery.
I’m In Love with the Court Reporter by alanmessing YouTube channel.
I’m planning to start a monthly media blast where we all share the different things we’re watching/listening to related to the field. So keep eyes out for that at the beginning of March. Enjoy!
Addendum:
I was sent this song by a reader. It’s from Stenoholics!!! A must listen!
I think this one will speak for itself. In recognition of Court Reporting & Captioning Week, an Office of Court Administration Broadcast went out today from the Honorable Tamiko Amaker.
This is a rallying cry for court reporters seeking provisional or permanent employment in the New York State Unified Court System. This is a court system that understands your value.
The text is provided below the images for those that rely on screen readers.
NYSUCS OCA Broadcast for Court Reporting & Captioning Week 2023. Part 1.NYSUCS OCA Broadcast for Court Reporting & Captioning Week 2023. Part 2
Good afternoon.
In commemoration of National Court Reporting Week (February 4 to February 8, 2023), and on behalf of Acting Chief Judge Anthony Cannataro and the entire UCS leadership, I wish to extend my gratitude to our highly skilled corps of court reporters across the State–who play a critical role within the New York State courts and justice system–for their hard work and commitment.
As “guardians” of the court record, UCS court reporters are responsible for producing a complete and accurate record of court proceedings, including trials, hearings, conferences and arraignments, preparing verbatim transcripts used by attorneys, judges and litigants. This important work requires special training, along with excellent language, research and organizational abilities, among other qualifications and attributes.
We are constantly looking to hire court reporters. Any graduate of a court reporting school or program who is interested in a fulfilling career in the courts may apply to work as a provisional employee, working in the criminal, civil and Family Court, so please pass the word on, and join me in expressing thanks to our dedicated UCS court reporters for their outstanding efforts throughout the year. Their work is integral, not only to the judicial process but to our democracy.
Occasionally I write about how, in my opinion, if I had a little more money I’d be wiping the floor with the STTI Bloc. I wanted to share a little bit about what I’ve learned over the years, and the story is easy to tell through my Meta Ad account overview.
The lifetime ad spending and impressions of Stenonymous as of February 4, 2023
So, as you can see, that overall CPM was quite high. That’s cost per thousand impressions, or cost per mille. Now that I’m a lot more experienced, I can tell you why that is.
Images can have over 20x the reach of written content. So what happens when I run an image ad?
Stenonymous determined to stop the STTI Bloc’s misinformation steamroller or end up under it.Stenonymous reveals ad spending for 30 days prior to February 4, 2023Stenonymous reveals huge drop in CPM after switching to image content.
So what I’ve learned is if we tell our story in pictures and artwork, we will, in all likelihood, have a much easier time of reaching people. I have to face the music. My written content is GREAT for documenting the dishonest behavior of the larger corps. It was not great for REACHING people.
So if you’re someone like a PYRP or an association, and you’re going to do social media advertising for some kind of public outreach campaign, for the love of steno, USE IMAGES.
And now you know that if you give ME money, it’s going to high-impact ads and ideas. I’ve got a few things still cooking that I can’t wait to share with you all.
You also now get to see that your donations were not wasted. Impressions are how many times the ad is on the screen. Reach is the number of unique profiles that saw an ad. Stenonymous has put stenographic media in front of half a million people with your help.
Just to drive the point home, look how different these two ad campaigns turned out. I understand how to reach the highest number of people at the lowest cost now.
Stenonymous compares the cost of image versus written advertising.
There’s an added benefit to supporting Stenonymous. I freely release data and information that makes us all stronger. This goes back to my beliefs about the world. I believe that we are all within the same realm of intelligence (some disabilities excepted) and that distributing information puts us on equal footing to make good choices. I am not like other players on the field that want to trick you for the sake of my wallet. If anything, I trick the people that make their money tricking working reporters.
As for the STTI Bloc, this is basically a war of attrition, their money versus our bodies. If you follow me on social media, you’ll know I was tracking Veritext’s digital ads versus steno ads in my feed for the holiday break. These notes confirmed my suspicion, that they were running digital ads much more often.
Stenonymous tracks digital v steno ads by Veritext December 2022
Veritext alone controls millions of dollars, at least from what we can scrape off Google.
A Google search for Veritext Revenue done by Stenonymous
My math has always been pretty simple. Look at what I’ve done with $10,000 and no previous media experience. We shifted the narrative of the field from “the shortage is impossible to solve” to “okay, that was a lie that none of the multimillion dollar corporations have defended in over a year.” There are about 20,000 – 30,000 stenographers. At a median pay of $60,000, stenographers control at least $1.2 billion annually. If they tossed me 0.2% of their income for one year, it’d be like a million dollars. Some of you have given way more than that 0.2%, so I don’t condone you shelling out of your pocket.
But this goes back to my point. We could pound on these idiots every single day for ages with that kind of money. NCRA asks you for about $300 a year. I’m asking for, more or less, $100 for one year, depending on how many people we could get behind a fundraising campaign. Granted, NCRA has expenses and programs I will never have, but I can do things that NCRA can never do. NCRA can never use its considerable market power to hound the fraudsters. There are honest antitrust concerns. Meanwhile, any attempt to bring me to court for the same reason would be laughed out of court because I’m a guy with a blog. I figured all this out in my spare time. I don’t have a Jesus complex, I just realize that we’re up against dirty players, and I’m willing to hit back way harder than they ever thought possible. Good luck hiring digital reporters while someone’s running 24/7 ads about digital being a scam.
That said, if I can’t get the money raised, maybe we could get a letter writing campaign going and flood a few media outlets with a few thousand letters about the shortage fraud. Force them to acknowledge us. Start making noise. I could see many people being hesitant to “go fund me,” but would those same people take the time to copy and paste a letter, press print, and mail it out? I think so.
Stenonymous visitors up for the first time since the massive funding campaign of 2021.
I’ve literally turned screwing with fraudsters into a business. Back me and you’ll see a return. Might come off like a grift, but money is just a means to an end, and that end being us all getting back to work and not worrying about being replaced by inferior technology. But whether or not you do support me, I hope the advertising tip helped.
And just in case you don’t think I’m under the skin of these fools, check out an excerpt from an email exchange I had with Mike McDonner of Kentuckiana. He was able to recount word for word every single thing that happened during my medical episode about a year ago after I got that post about me from India taken down.
Mike McDonner from Kentuckiana feigns concern for Christopher Day in 2022, tipping us all off that the STTI Bloc reads the blog and monitors my YouTube.Christopher Day (Stenonymous) replies to Mike McDonner (Kentuckiana)
Let me ask you this: What kind of monsters run a hit piece on someone who just had a major health crisis?
Something that comes up very, very often is “realtime is safe.” “There will always be a need for good realtime.” These things basically allow some realtimers to kid themselves into believing they are irreplaceable. I’m going to rip the band-aid off here. If we lose the non-realtime work, realtime will cease to be good income. It may take a while, but my basis for saying that goes back to economics / supply and demand. Needless to say, if you’re one of the many realtimers that gives a damn, the vitriol isn’t directed at you.
At present, we have a field of about 30,000 people. About 2,000 are CRRs. In the event that non-realtime work is lost, it will create a situation where about 28,000 people have an incentive to lie and say they are realtime providers. Effectively, the supply of realtime writers will go from a few thousand to tens of thousands. What happens when the supply of something increases while demand remains the same? The price falls. We’re talking about 10x or 15x today’s supply. Even if you think I suck at math and it’s a third of that, that’s still 3-5x the supply. The rates are going to fall through the floor as a matter of economic reality. The agencies will coddle you and tell you how special you are right up until they slit your throat and send someone else to do your job for less.
I accept that this will be unpopular. Confirmation bias is a powerful thing. For the last two decades you’ve all been soaked with “realtime is the future,” “everyone must go realtime,” “realtime will always be in demand,” “the cream rises to the top.” And all of that is bullshit. We’re all better than digital. The cream didn’t rise to the top there, they just started replacing us. If anyone thinks for one second companies won’t start sending “okay” realtimers who agree to work for less over “super special realtimers,” while pocketing the difference, then this might be a really rude but necessary awakening. USL allegedly stole from one of its executives, for crying out loud! You think they won’t pull off a completely legal move that makes them more money?
If you think court reporters wouldn’t lie about their realtime status, think again. It was happening back when I started in 2010. The smart ones figured out they could beat the atrocious rates by claiming to be realtime. Needless to say, I wasn’t so smart. Now imagine a world where the rug has been pulled out from under thousands of people and their families, and all they have to do to keep their jobs is say “oh yeah, I’m realtime too.”
I believe in realtime. I think it should continue to be a specialty. I think it should continue to command good income. I also know there are a lot of damn good realtimers that are fighting, educating, and care about everyone. But for those sitting on the sideline assuming things will just work out for you because you worked so hard to get where you are, rethink it. When they’re ready to turn the faucet off on you, you don’t get advanced notice.
Will they, though? Are you really sure? Do you have it in writing?
Lawyers don’t play this game. When the robots came for their “beloved” traffic court they fought back. They don’t throw those lawyers under the bus and say “the cream rises to the top, so sad for you.” And this is why this post is a little indignant. We’re the only ninnies that go around saying “yes, please take food off everyone else’s plate, but when you get to me, I know you’ll reward my loyalty with a second helping.”
