All Good Reporters Gives Thanks this Thanksgiving Holiday

With Thanksgiving fast approaching this week, all of us here at All Good Reporters were reminiscing about our reporting careers and the things we’re thankful for:

Not having to type on an IBM Selectric (fitted with a court reporter’s ratchet). So long to cutting and pasting.
And let’s not leave out the pages of carbon paper and trying to line them up when making corrections.

Not having to dictate any longer. Long gone are the days of sitting at the table on the weekends and dictating through packs of marked Stenograph paper, ticking off the folds as we went along. Sheer torture.

Thankful for the first computerized stenograph machines — but not the 8-hour tapes that went with them!

Not having to deal with indelible ink stains, steno machine ribbon spools or changing the ribbon on manual steno machines (what a messy task even with gloves on).

Stand-alone computers for court reporters. Goodbye to those BaronData mainframes with those large disks that held your dictionary. And goodbye to those large invoices from the court reporting agencies for the use of their mainframes (one monthly invoice of $1500 immediately springs to mind). This was in the ’80’s, remember. For all you economists, $1500 was a huge chunk of change in the ’80’s.

Not having to deal with those machines that would remove the carbon from your computer-generated transcript and at the same time, cut off the side edges and rip the pages apart. It was a step ahead, but it was still time consuming.

Not having to deal with all those realtime cables. Hooray for wireless!

Being a part of history-making proceedings throughout the years: The first DNA trial, the moon rocks case in federal court and too many others to mention.

Having the advanced skill set to provide for myself and others.

Traveling to far and distant locations and countries.

Being a realtime facilitator for the hearing impaired students at the colleges.

Networking at the seminars and national conventions.

Learning a little bit about everything and a lot about nothing :-).

To all our clients and followers, from all of us here at All Good Reporters, may all the good things that Thanksgiving brings be yours in abundance this year!