How many male court reporters are there in the US?

I stumbled upon a CNN livestream from a criminal trial in Phoenix, AZ. The court reporter is an elderly gentleman. I only know American courtrooms from watching TV and thus far, I’ve only seen female court reporters.

I only know American courtrooms from watching TV and thus far, I’ve only seen female court reporters.

Huh? Then what do you mean by: “I stumbled upon a CNN livestream from a criminal trial in Phoenix, AZ. The court reporter is an elderly gentleman.”

Plainly you have seen both male and female.

CNN covers a variety of live events on the Internet, criminal trials, press conferences, Senate hearings, Mardi Gras parades etc.:

Whenever I feel the urge to procrastinate, I check what’s on. This is what I mean by “stumble upon”.

And as to court reporters, I’m referring to the stenographers who produce the verbatim transcripts of court proceedings. I’m under the impression that court reporters are mainly of the female persuasion.

In my experience in courts and depositions, I’d say roughly 20% are male. So, clearly a minority, but not quite at the level of unicorn. Don’t know if it varies regionally. My experience is primarily West of the Mississippi.

Donnerwetter, you missed the mark completely.

All I was questioning was your conflicting statements " thus far, I’ve only seen female court reporters" preceding “The court reporter is an elderly gentleman.”
I included the first part of the second statement “I stumbled upon” to indicate that you claimed to have actually seen this male reporter.

Since you were saying you had just seen a male court reporter, I was pointing out that claiming to have “only seen female court reporters” was plainly incorrect.

I think the intended idea was ‘I wave only seen female court reporters except for this one elderly man’. It seemed clear enough to me anyway.

Indeed. Thank you.

In the time I worked with court reporters, I saw a definite shift from male to female. Of the old, retired court reporters I know, a significant majority are men. Of the young working court reporters that have been in the business 10 years or less, the overwhelming majority are women. I couldn’t say what the current actual ratio is, but based on what I saw at the last National Court Reporters Association convention I attended, I’d estimate that 15% or fewer are men.

Membership in the association has declined, but I would say there are currently somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 licensed and/or working court reporters in the U.S. Assuming my estimate in the previous paragraph is correct, that would give us probably 3,000 to 4,500 male court reporters.
N.B.: I am not a court reporter (although I did marry one), but I was a contributing editor to their trade journal, a faculty member at their national conferences, taught computer-aided transcription for court reporters part-time for two years at a California college, wrote two books on the subject, and ran a court reporting software company for 10 years, so I think I have the credentials to answer the question.

Were you genuinely confused by the OP’s phrasing?

I don’t get this either. The OP used “thus far” and that obviously made the statement mean, “until now I had only seen females but I just saw a male and that made me wonder about the percentage distribution.” No problem at all.

IME in NE Ohio, in various courts since 1992, about a third of all court reporters are male.

It’s my experience (in Australia) that there are significantly more female than male journalists/reporters (regardless of rounds/area) full stop nowadays.

Quite why that is, however, is probably best left for Great Debates.

I’m a lawyer, and I’d agree with the person who said about 20% are male. That seems about right to me. Maybe 25%. Certainly more women than men do it. But I wouldn’t say male court reporters are rare.

In U.S. terminology, court reporters are not journalists in any sense of the word. They are the ones responsible for producing the official transcript of a court proceeding or deposition. There is some debate over the breadth of the term, with the narrowest definition including only stenotype shorthand reporters and the broadest including anyone who uses any type of shorthand or recording apparatus to produce a legally-certified transcript of something.

Ah, OK. The context wasn’t clear to me - I’ve always referred to them as “Stenographers”. In my field, a “Court Reporter” is the journalist who reports on the goings-on at court for a media outlet.

It’s not the clearest of terminology. “Stenograph” is actually a brand name, so “stenotype reporters” is a better generic, but that doesn’t cover shorthand reporters using other technologies. Court reporters is reasonably clear, except that it’s not obvious that it includes the people that create transcripts in court, in depositions, in hearings, and in any other legal proceeding.

Most court reporters I see use computer-assisted steno devices - the best can give you an almost-real-time transcript of the trial you’re in.

Yes, realtime transcription using stenotype keyboard input is basically the industry standard now. It’s also the technology behind most realtime closed captioning on television.