#58 - Behind the Blog: Chris Day's Stenonymous Journey

Christopher Day, welcome to the Court Reporter Podcast.

Why don't you share with everybody who you are and what you're known for, Okay.

So my name is Christopher Day.

I've been a court reporter for 14 years now.

I started off doing deposition court reporting, moved into grand jury.

And then for the last, it feels like 10 years now, but it's a little bit less.

I've been doing, criminal court reporting.

But I'm actually better known for my blog, Stenonymous.

com.

And it's always been funny to me because we're so known for

our certifications and so forth.

And I got known for running a website.

So Stenonymous, you are the author and the founder, the creator

of Stenonymous, which is the biggest blog in the court reporting industry.

how did that come about?

What inspired you and motivated you to start Stenonymous?

I was very active on stenographer social media, a lot of Facebook groups,

and we started to see a lot of the same themes pop up from students.

When do I put this parenthetical?

Where do I find jobs?

at that point in history, a lot of that stuff was all word of mouth.

if you didn't know that guy or that gal, you were just out of luck,

or if you didn't have the right mentors, you were just out of luck.

So I started to document, very simple stuff.

for example, where you could find jobs in New York city, grand

jury, look on the DA websites.

basically people were asking you questions, or you heard questions

being asked, and you decided these questions keep being repeated FAQ page.

I wish I had known about that earlier because I felt the same way, and I

didn't know that your blog exists years ago when I first started.

But I was always like, I wish there could be a group Q& A session

or something where we could just hear other people's questions.

And when you hear other people's questions, you automatically remember

the questions that you want to ask.

Was such a great idea to get something that stays out there for people

to just get a link and check the resources without having to get the

question repeated over and over again.

Yeah, no, it's very common.

so I did start writing for people like you, basically.

Then it evolved into more of a wider industry analysis and

documenting different events going on in the court reporting field.

Okay.

So what is your core message that you want people to know?

Like for people who haven't necessarily known about the

blog or been following the blog?

Is there a central message that you have that everything builds

upon now as you've been doing it?

How long have you been doing this?

I think I started writing seriously in 2017.

Okay.

So it's been a while.

There's times when I'm writing every day.

There's times when, I've taken multiple months off writing

and it's just go with the flow.

Sometimes I even hire people to help write stuff.

It's very much, a work in progress.

I would say the core, there's like a theme that's emerging I always felt that

there was a culture of fear and silence in our profession, if you didn't fit

in with the established culture, you could be treated a certain kind of way.

I think my core message, my core theme for people is you can be who

you are, and you are powerful, and the things that you do make a difference.

I want people out there who have their own projects, who have their own.

Expressions or whatever.

to go for it because I was told, Don't go for it.

And it exploded into something that, people read.

Yeah, that's so true.

there's so much negative thoughts, even that our own brains offer us

about things that we endeavor to do

It takes a lot of encouragement from not only ourselves, but from people,

coaches, people that encourage us, people that are always on our side

rooting for us and believe in us.

we have to be our biggest advocates sometimes.

That's a really good inspirational lesson to be learned.

Can you elaborate more on what that central message what it's emerging into?

, a concrete example, one of the things that I've documented over the

years is that there was this group, Speech to Text Institute, and they

were basically committing fraud.

They thought they were misleading job seekers about the state of the field.

And with our little hobbyist blog, and, information and funding from

the community, we were able to put up an information campaign about this.

eventually, they got sued, and shut down their website.

people told me, what you do, that doesn't matter, it won't count for anything,

We're out here shutting down frauds.

It inspires others to stand up against, the wrongs they see So

what exactly were they doing wrong?

as everybody knows there's the court reporter shortage, right?

that was forecasted back in 2013.

And what this group did was it took that forecast from 2013.

It ignored all of the, progress that we made since 2013, like the A to Z

program, OpenSteno, Project Steno, all kinds of programs and things that

we've set up to address the shortage.

They didn't adjust any of their numbers and they extrapolated it

forward it made the shortage seem much larger than it actually is.

And did that to say, Oh, we need digital court reporting.

Basically, it was more or less a marketing campaign for digital court

reporting, as opposed to an honest, this is the state of the industry.

it tricked a lot of people, small business owners, court reporters.

Would say even for a time it had, our association So speech to text Institute,

the Institute that teaches people how to become a digital court reporter.

No, they were more of a, informational type of organization.

They didn't really teach people.

I would say that the ones that are more into the teaching or the

certification is, I think it's called.

The Association for Electronic Reporters and Transcribers.

AAERT.

they regulate the industry of digital court reporting.

Yeah they certify them, do you know any digital court reporters?

Do you know what that even really is There's so much talk about.

court reporting and I feel very not informed about it.

I don't want to form an opinion until I really know, obviously we

shouldn't bully people or be mean to people Because of what they do

unless it's something illegal, we see a lot of that online with the court

reporting industry and it's weird.

Here's my theory on it.

Here's what I truly believe.

We have this misinformation campaign that happened, and it made a

lot of people scared and nervous about the state of the industry.

And people take that fear.

And that nervousness and that pain and they channel it into what they have

control over and what they have control over is bullying these people online being

mean, saying, they're just button pushers.

Meanwhile, the real problem is the misinformation campaign and

these big companies backing it.

but people don't feel like they have control over that.

They don't feel like they can address that as the real issue.

So you see them, go after the individual reporters and in some states it is illegal

for digital court reporting, to be used.

But, in general, it's not really the fault of the individual job seekers,

it's the fault of the companies misleading them telling them, this is

the future, this is the job, this is how you become a court reporter, and

purposefully not telling them about the stenographic route, which, in my

opinion, is more efficient in general.

Okay.

Was it a part of a marketing scheme were they making money off of it there's a

whole chain of, connections that for example, Veritext had someone on the

board of that speech to text Institute group, and ties with Blue Ledge, which

is digital court reporter training.

So basically Veritext is telling these people, Hey, you got to

get this job, go to Blue Ledge.

Blueledge is then in their pipeline, and then they're buying equipment from

Stenograph, who also had someone on the board of the Speech to Text Institute.

it was this connectivity thing where everybody's set to make

money off digital, of course they were going to say it's the future.

how are they taking advantage and making more money off of digital?

It varies.

I've heard up to 50 an hour.

And what they're doing is they're recording the testimony,

and then it's generally being transcribed by someone else.

And if the agency can, they'll send it overseas to be transcribed for cheaper.

this can open up a lot of security risks if you're sending this

information overseas, and you're paying these people very little, then

they have more incentive to sell the information, or do anything with it.

And the other thing is that you have trouble certifying the transcript or

at least if there's questions about the transcript finding out who did what,

because you might be sending it to an overseas team where One part was done by

one transcriber, another part by another transcriber, in the legal field, we've

had trouble getting people to answer, for example, New York subpoenas from New

Jersey, so you're not going to get someone from the Philippines to come in and

testify about something they transcribed.

If there's ever a question with the transcript.

so it's one of those things that there's not really problems until

there are and until attorneys are questioning this stuff and how it's

produced and whether it's correct.

we spend years of training and we still make errors.

Can you really rely on folks that might just be pulled into

this for a quick gig type job.

These are all kinds of questions that people have to at least ask themselves

and come to their own conclusions.

I feel like I have to talk to a few digital reporters and ask

them maybe it's a different method of taking the testimony down,

Maybe they oversee it from start to end, or maybe they don't.

If they send it overseas, that's, questionable.

If I needed a reliable transcript, but if it's a human being who is

there in person and overseeing the whole process, That's different.

I'm definitely interested in learning more about that.

typically they don't, oversee the whole process.

A lot of times the agencies have that oversight role and it goes back

to how much you trust the agencies.

I tend not to because of things that I've documented on my blog

and some people trust very much.

But if you want to talk to a digital court reporter, I can

introduce you to my friend.

If you have a connection, I would love to be introduced.

what do you think?

Do you think that yes, it's true that there is a shortage?

And it's true that it is a little bit difficult to become a stenographer.

I know how much I sacrificed in order to get through school and it wasn't easy.

if I knew other options existed, I might've been tempted to, take another

route also I'm curious because we were planning this AI forum in the future, just

to talk about What are the threats of AI?

Should we be threatened?

Is it something that can help us to enhance our work product?

Or is it something we should be worried about is going to replace us?

That type of thing.

I've come to view it from two different worlds.

I do think that there are definitely use cases for it.

I think that it is being adopted into our software to an extent, so we're

going to see more usage of it in general.

I'm also very skeptical because AI, when you talk to whoever's selling

it, it's the solution for everything.

there's a number of issues with the way that AI has been, Funded

so I, example, I just read today.

wall street is starting to wonder if it's an investment bubble, like the.

com bubble.

in a book I read called, smart until it's dumb.

the author talks about some of the unethical practices of.

People who, run these AI models they'll try to make them seem

more efficient than they are or like a solution when they're not.

How much of AI's ubiquity is because it's being propped up by all this money?

And how much of its ubiquity is because it's an actual

solution to actual problems?

the jury's kind of still out on it.

we're going to see some winners and losers.

years ago there's this group called Gartner, and they predicted

something like 80 percent of AI business models would fail.

if you're in that 80%, that's really unfortunate, for your business, who's

relying on this AI to be a winner.

But if you're in the 20 percent, then maybe it's worth adopting or

adapting I think it's a nuanced answer.

do you remember from time to time I message you asking questions because I

know that you know a lot more than I do and a lot more than a lot of people do.

So sometimes I ask you questions and I think I had asked you about like

this very question and what I just asked you, which is basically if.

If AI could replace us anytime soon, or if we should be threatened

and how we can utilize it to help us, there are AI tools that do

increase efficiency and productivity and that chat GPT, for example.

If I feel like everyone should use that.

It's such a good tool.

But you gave me a really good answer, You talked about all this research

that you had done, the articles you had read, and How your conclusion was

basically like, it's not gonna replace us.

So some of the research that I've done there's two main studies, there's

the testifying while black study.

that was not AI.

That was just people tested on the AAVE dialect, African

American vernacular English.

what they found in pilot study one was that regular people understood

this dialect at about 40%.

Lawyers in pilot study two understood about 60%.

court reporters in the main study got about 80%., the media ran with, oh

no, they only got 80%, which I agree that there's definitely, progress

to be made there, but they missed the part of the story where court

reporters hear at twice the rate

you take that 80 percent and look at another study, from Stanford,

the racial disparities and automated speech recognition study.

in that study, they tested AI from five different companies.

I think it was Microsoft, IBM I think Google, Amazon, they

tested it and it was between 25%.

And a hundred.

So again, if you're in the a hundred, that's great.

If you're at 25.

Then you're even worse than the people in pilot study one in testifying while black.

What we're seeing here is that when it comes to equality, when it comes to

fairness, when it comes to some of the people that go through the criminal

justice system, this technology is not going to represent their dialect.

Accurately or their testimony accurately.

When it comes to the synonymous blog, one thing that really stands

out and that you're known for is you are very honest and unbiased.

You just, report facts, right?

Yes and no.

I've taken an approach of being very unbiased and factual, but I've also

taken the approach of being very biased and being very honest about being very

biased because I see the facts a certain way and, I can't run from that all media

has some bias., and it's about being honest about that bias and trying to

represent things in a truthful way as opposed to only ever being a demagogue or

an advocate for, a set path it probably takes a lot of courage to post things that

you know are going to get you attacked.

But I've seen a few and the ones I've seen have been really good.

Thank you.

I gotta be honest for the most part, people don't really come at me.

When they do, it's usually like anonymous comments on the blog.

Naegeli.

That's right.

I forgot about that one.

They got upset or this is my recollection as I'm sitting here.

They got upset because I posted something about their pricing and which is again,

something that I do as a consumer awareness, campaign, one of the things

we discovered in general is that court reporting agencies, a lot of them.

And bills and stuff that reporters just don't charge.

So you have them adding on all these fees and making the, not necessarily

Naegeli now, but court reporting companies generally adding on all these

fees, making the bills really high and court reporters seem more expensive.

And so I think I posted something about, Naegeli' pricing and they got upset

with me and they had a lawyer write to me and, I wrote right back to him and I

said, Look, there's a culture of fear in my, field and I'm aiming to break it.

I love that, I think we need to read that on the podcast at some point.

In full disclosure, I, had a medical incident around that time, so I don't

feel that my letter to the lawyer was as good as it could have been.

still pretty proud of what I did and that I stood up to them.

I think it's pretty amazing.

Thank you.

When I read it, I was like, oh, touche.

after I did it a lot of people came out and said, they also treated

me this way, or they did this to me, or they threatened me too.

And I stood up to them too, because I saw what you did I think it was

very important that I did that and I published it and I let people know,

you don't have to be afraid of these people because in the end that's how

they operate is fear, scaring people with legal threats that are basically

empty, when you sue somebody, you have to have what's called a cause of action.

there is no cause of action for someone publishing truth on the internet.

It's just how it is, right?

If you're publishing facts that are clearly True Yeah, or even if

you're just publishing opinion.

Oh, yeah You know if you and I'm sure there'll be people that'll publish

plenty of opinions about me And it's not something you can sue over because

this is America and we're entitled to our opinions So people can't sue for

like defamation or anything like that?

Based on opinion.

if it's about facts and it's true, that's an affirmative defense, or if

it's an opinion, then it's not a factual statement and it's not defamation.

Interesting.

Yeah, I guess I feel like I should be more informed about these

things before I ask questions.

Look I happened to research all about defamation in my twenties.

basically I felt that I was defamed.

by someone back then.

And so I learned the elements of defamation.

Basically, it has to be a false statement of fact, published to

a third party that causes damage.

So for example, if you say something mean to me or even untrue to me, I

can't sue you for defamation because you're just publishing it to me, but

if you go and tell Bill, I don't know he robbed me or something like that.

That's defamation because I didn't rob you and that's a crime but

then if you're reporting a crime to the police and it's an honest

belief, then it's not defamation.

You're just bringing it up to the authorities.

and there's other things like defamation per se, where you don't

have to prove that the statement caused damage, It's interesting stuff.

And I would say to anybody interested in it, definitely Google some of

the stuff I just talked about, and you'd be surprised what you find.

Thank you for sharing and coming on the Court Reporter podcast.

Stenonymous dot com is where you can find this amazing, very informative

blog that for all of you who haven't heard about it or read it yet definitely

check that out where else can people reach out to you or find you online?

Facebook is a good place to find me.

Sometimes you get caught in that other messages folder, so yeah,

that's what I was gonna say.

It's if you're not already friends, you're a mutual friend, if you have one

mutual friend, then you can friend me.

Awesome.

I hope we can continue this.

We're planning an AI forum.

sometime in September, but it might be October.

We'll have to touch base with the others who are a part of that.

can't wait.

also, I would love to, discuss any other collaborations between

Stenonymous and the podcast.

Thank you so much.

Have a good evening and I'll talk to you Have a great evening.

Thank you again.

Thank you.

Bye.