A Gentle and Straightforward Reply to Christopher Day’s Response

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Christopher Day of Stenonymous put out a thoughtful and respectful reply to my critique of digital pay parity, and I appreciate that. I respect Christopher’s long-standing commitment to this industry and his willingness to engage in open debate. But I still disagree with his core argument, and I think it’s worth laying out why — plainly and without dressing it up.

Christopher’s central idea is this: if we push for digital reporters to get the same pay as stenographers, companies will stop favoring digital over steno because they’ll lose the financial advantage. In his view, this levels the playing field and takes away the main reason corporations push digital: cost-cutting.

I think that’s overly optimistic — and here’s why.

Raising digital pay doesn’t make digital better

First, digital reporting and stenography are not the same job. Stenographers have years of training, practice, certification, and expertise that digital reporters generally don’t. Steno isn’t just pushing a button and recording words — it’s an active, skillful process that requires listening, judgment, and split-second decisions.

So when we talk about “pay parity,” we’re essentially saying: let’s pay the less trained, less skilled worker the same as the one who spent years mastering their craft.

That’s not fixing the problem. That’s rewarding the problem.

We should be pushing to raise standards, not lower the bar. If digital reporters want equal pay, the answer isn’t just to hand it over — it’s to demand that the work match the same level of training, certification, and skill that stenographers bring.

Companies won’t stop at parity — they’ll push for cheaper

Even if you did get digital pay raised to match steno pay, it’s naive to think companies will just throw up their hands and say, “Well, I guess we’ll go back to hiring stenographers.”

Corporations don’t stop looking for ways to cut costs. If they can’t save money on digital pay, they’ll look for the next thing — probably automation, AI, offshoring, or cutting corners somewhere else. If you think big-box companies are going to eat higher labor costs without finding another pressure point, you’re underestimating how corporate economics work.

And remember, they’ve already spent years investing in digital. They’ve sunk money into the tech, the training systems, the sales pitch. They’re not going to walk away from all that just because of wage increases.

Perception is shaped by more than money

Christopher rightly points out that perception shapes reality — but I think he misses an important piece. If we push for digital pay parity, we risk sending the public, the legal community, and the courts a dangerous message: that digital and steno are interchangeable.

Right now, one of the strongest arguments stenographers have is quality. When we advocate for ourselves, we can say, “Look, we deliver better results, we’re more accurate, we have the experience.” If we declare digital equal in pay, we lose that ground in the public conversation. People will assume that if they cost the same, they must be equally good. That’s how perception works too.

We shouldn’t help digital reporters look like they’re on the same professional level if they’re not. That undercuts one of the most important distinctions we have in this fight.

Respect all workers, but don’t confuse the work

Christopher says we shouldn’t deride digital reporters or assume they’re less intelligent — and I agree. We’re all just people trying to earn a living.

But skill is not the same thing as intelligence. Respecting someone’s dignity doesn’t mean pretending their work is the same as someone else’s. A digital reporter working with basic equipment and less training is not doing the same job as a seasoned stenographer managing complex, high-stakes litigation.

We can stand up for fair treatment and better wages across the board without confusing or collapsing the standards that protect professional excellence.

Unionization doesn’t need to be built on concession

One of Christopher’s strongest points is his push for unionization, and I’m with him there. Organizing and collective bargaining are powerful tools — and this industry would benefit from them.

But here’s where we split: you don’t need to sacrifice standards to build a union. In fact, unions often work best when they protect standards — when they ensure that wages reflect training, that skill is recognized, and that workers aren’t undercut by lower-cost, lower-quality alternatives.

The idea that we have to concede “digital = steno” just to bring people together under one bargaining umbrella is, to me, unnecessary. We can have solidarity without surrendering what makes each role unique.

Focus on pride and distinction, not just survival

I get the urgency behind Christopher’s argument. He’s trying to find ways to keep this profession alive and stop the corporate slide toward cheap, fast, and disposable labor. But I think there’s another path.

Instead of focusing on pay parity, we should be doubling down on what makes stenographers irreplaceable. We should be running public campaigns on accuracy, quality, accountability, and expertise. We should be lobbying for regulations that require minimum standards for legal records — standards digital can’t meet without fundamentally changing its training and certification systems.

In other words, we shouldn’t meet digital halfway. We should raise the ceiling so that only the best work, from any method, qualifies for the jobs that matter most.

Wrapping it up

Christopher, I respect the hell out of what you’re trying to do. You’ve been an honest, consistent advocate for this profession, and your heart is in the right place. We both want the same thing: for stenographers to thrive, for this industry to have a future, and for working people to have power in the face of corporate consolidation.

But I think your digital pay parity idea risks giving away too much. It risks erasing the hard-won, hard-earned value of this craft. It muddies the message, it levels the field in a way that doesn’t lift everyone, and it hands corporations an easy out.

Let’s organize. Let’s advocate. Let’s push for fair treatment.

But let’s also stand unapologetically for the unique value of human expertise.

Because at the end of the day, that is what will set us apart — and that’s the message worth fighting for.

Published by stenoimperium

We exist to facilitate the fortifying of the Stenography profession and ensure its survival for the next hundred years! As court reporters, we've handed the relationship role with our customers, or attorneys, over to the agencies and their sales reps.  This has done a lot of damage to our industry.  It has taken away our ability to have those relationships, the ability to be humanized and valued.  We've become a replaceable commodity. Merely saying we are the “Gold Standard” tells them that we’re the best, but there are alternatives.  Who we are though, is much, much more powerful than that!  We are the Responsible Charge.  “Responsible Charge” means responsibility for the direction, control, supervision, and possession of stenographic & transcription work, as the case may be, to assure that the work product has been critically examined and evaluated for compliance with appropriate professional standards by a licensee in the profession, and by sealing and signing the documents, the professional stenographer accepts responsibility for the stenographic or transcription work, respectively, represented by the documents and that applicable stenographic and professional standards have been met.  This designation exists in other professions, such as engineering, land surveying, public water works, landscape architects, land surveyors, fire preventionists, geologists, architects, and more.  In the case of professional engineers, the engineering association adopted a Responsible Charge position statement that says, “A professional engineer is only considered to be in responsible charge of an engineering work if the professional engineer makes independent professional decisions regarding the engineering work without requiring instruction or approval from another authority and maintains control over those decisions by the professional engineer’s physical presence at the location where the engineering work is performed or by electronic communication with the individual executing the engineering work.” If we were to adopt a Responsible Charge position statement for our industry, we could start with a draft that looks something like this: "A professional court reporter, or stenographer, is only considered to be in responsible charge of court reporting work if the professional court reporter makes independent professional decisions regarding the court reporting work without requiring instruction or approval from another authority and maintains control over those decisions by the professional court reporter’s physical presence at the location where the court reporting work is performed or by electronic communication with the individual executing the court reporting work.” Shared purpose The cornerstone of a strategic narrative is a shared purpose. This shared purpose is the outcome that you and your customer are working toward together. It’s more than a value proposition of what you deliver to them. Or a mission of what you do for the world. It’s the journey that you are on with them. By having a shared purpose, the relationship shifts from consumer to co-creator. In court reporting, our mission is “to bring justice to every litigant in the U.S.”  That purpose is shared by all involved in the litigation process – judges, attorneys, everyone.  Who we are is the Responsible Charge.  How we do that is by Protecting the Record.

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