Come on, Reporters

 LOL, I wondered!  My journalism teacher would have fainted.  

Yeah, I almost fainted too, Jill!  Strange, because a preview showed the paragraphs intact.  However, I wrote the post in Word (so as to avoid a timeout for a ridiculously long post), and possibly a Word import caused a glitch.

Good to know.

 Kathy,

I went into the HTML and tried to see where you paragraphed.  I think I got most, but if there's some specific place you either want to paragraph or remove a paragraph, e-mail me privately and I'll change it for you. 

Great job...thank you, Candis!

Kathy

Posted this follow-up over on my site, but thought it might bear repeating over here.  I'm just so full of pee and vinegar before my third cup of coffee

Thanks again, Breck, for starting the discourse.

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Breck, you're right on the money. Great post. Apathy on our own part is what will ultimately do us in. To everyone out there still bangin' on an avocado manual writer, to those who are praying your hard drive survives another year because you can't buy a new computer that'll run OZpc, to anyone that's qualified to write realtime and won't (and those who do who haven't put in the time to hone their skills), you're all killing the profession in tiny measured increments.

Would any of us go to a dentist who gave you a shot of whiskey and then came at you with a pair of pliers? How about a stockbroker who's still reliant on ticker tape because "It still works, I'm retiring in five years, and I don't want to mess with upgrading"? If you bought a ticket from NYC to LAX and a propeller aircraft pulled up at the gate, fueled up and ready for the 27-hour trip, would you go? Every time a reporter shows up to their job without realtime translation, they're bogging down a roomful of $500-an-hour types in 1920s technology.

Everyone screamed bloody murder when President DiLorenzo mentioned including electronic reporting in the NCRA ranks, but why the hell not? If all you do as a reporter is sit quietly in the corner, get down most of it and hope your tape backup is getting the rest (and then take three weeks to get out the transcript), how are you any different from an ER rig?

I'm not picking on anyone here, just making the point that if we're all so damned proud of being machine writers and are still hellbent on excluding all other methods from our associations, might be time for a few more of us to accept some accountability, pick up the ball and move it forward a couple yards.

That's just my opinion... I could be wrong.

Everyone screamed bloody murder when President DiLorenzo mentioned including electronic reporting in the NCRA ranks, but why the hell not? If all you do as a reporter is sit quietly in the corner, get down most of it and hope your tape backup is getting the rest (and then take three weeks to get out the transcript), how are you any different from an ER rig?

LOL!!! Mike, that's good.   So true. 

If you get a chance, read some of the posts on other forums from scopists who are talking about reporters transcripts growing.  It's insane.  The reporter will send the scopist a 100 page transcript and til the scopist is done adding all the dropped words and sentences, the transcript grows to 150 pages!!!  That's HORRIBLE.   I've had days where I'm thankful my audio is there to back me up, but NEVER to add pages worth of testimony.  I'd stop reporting if I was that bad.

I got a call from a frantic reporter last week because she needs to get all new equipment.  Her computer with Windows 98 finally died.  She needs a new computer and oh, dear gawd, UPDATED CAT SOFTWARE!!!! 

Mike,

Thanks for the kind words.

And thanks for agreeing with me and trying to get certain reporters to wake up.  You really, really made some great points and comparisons that hopefully will encourage many who read this.  Way to "bring it."

Hopeful,

Thanks for the reply, Lil.  I know exactly what you mean about transcridema (swelling of the transcript). 

I've recently noticed a lot fewer requests for readback (another way we can differentiate vs. ER), a lot more attorneys just reasking their question.  Is this a no-confidence vote against us all based on the masses who hope their scopist can get it later?  Just wonderin' out loud...

I will tell you that readback is discouraged by the judge in my courtroom because at that point the proceedings start going backward instead of forward.  One readback, no big deal.  But typically if an attorney asks for a readback of his question he'll just continue to do it.  It slows down the proceedings.  I think this is a possibility in the freelance world as well; however, I'm sure there are many different reasons attorneys are not requesting readback as frequently as they once did. I hear A LOT of inartful questions.  However, this is general jurisdiction court!

<<If we continue to proclaim that realtime is only for the elite, we are reinforcing the message to those who choose not to be the “elite” in the field that it is okay to be mediocre.  Realtime, quite simply, is the only way for us to compete in a tech-savvy world.>>

Hear, hear!

Kudos to you, Rhonda, for your educational plans.  IMO, the best way to justify higher rates is by having higher education...and not just in CR.  Particularly, English literature and other reading, so that we recognize what we hear; English grammar, so we know how to punctuate what we hear; business, so that we understand organizational processes and costs and marketing; and economics, so that we understand how the marketplace works and how we can compete in it.  The history and politics are wonderul too, for adding to our knowledge base and vocabulary.  In this day and age too, with online education, taking a class is just a computer away!

Lisa,

It's quite the opposite in my court.  When the attorneys ask for readback, MY JUDGE reads it back from the real-time.  Cracks me up...!!!

Very cool, Shari.  Now, that's job security.

Good work.

Kathy

Karen,

I personally believe that NCRA would lose a serious number of members if they chose to go this direction.  I have heard more and more reporters say they would never pay the dues except for the fact they would lose their certification.  Another problem is that if interactive realtime was 90% and the those that didn't do interactive realtime 10%, you would find that we would not be able to charge extra because everyone could then offer it. 

We had a huge increase in membership in NCRA when everyone was grandfathered in as RPRs.  That has been 30 years ago.  Most of those are gone.  Could it be that we need to grandfather others in with some designation so that they would have a designation behind their names and they would be required to keep up with continuing education classes to keep that designation?

How about a red star in the Sourcebook to show that you are a certified realtime writer?  I don't know if that would do any good but it is certainly a thought. That would separate the highest skill writers from the rest.  The only problem with that, then everyone would want some type of colored star designation.  For that reason that might not be possible.

Lillian,

You call those wannabe reporters.  A person that reports like that is completely unacceptable for this profession.  Steno is only the best if we have a competent reporter.  I really wonder how that reporter could read back when asked.