… because this week’s NCRA blast had a big ol’ article about the A to Z Program trying to give a boost to the reputation and status of the rumored member vying for the position who is also the recipient of the coveted — but now cheapened — DSA award.  Good PR is very good before a big announcement.

We haven’t had time to do the research, but we’ve heard from a few members that they seem to recall a similar program that was implemented around the country as long as a decade or two ago, so it may appear that the A to Z Program is just a recycled idea packaged with a new pretty bow.

This DSA recipient has been on the board of NCRA through many of its terrible events:  Boosting the credibility and career of a past president who now effectively replaces stenographic reporters with recording systems*; the sale of the building**; a lot of the umbrella brouhaha; the mass exodus of members, etc.

We find it interesting how a program that was recently re-introduced with no performance measures is worthy of the DSA award.  Why did the board pass up giving the DSA award to the masterminds of the “Writing Our Future” survey or the “Take Note” campaign?  Those programs have been around long enough to be statistically measured for their impacts on the stenographic profession.

In our opinions, this is the grand strategic plan that the DSA recipient and others implemented a number of years ago.  (We understand that the DSA recipient and a past ED/CEO have been selling “strategic plans” to reporters at many conventions this past year or so — but that’s a digression.)  We’re figuring that the grand strategic plan really got rolling in the late 2000s, and it will reach its fruition when the board announces the position of ED/CEO of NCRA.  And then the mean girls club will continue.

It seems like it takes loads of patience to see a strategic plan through, and maybe it went like this:  Nominate a good number of members to the board and then use your influence to get them on that board so that those board members owe you the favor of their votes to make you the ED/CEO of NCRA with a nice six-figure salary and great benefits package (wouldn’t we all like that?).  It appears that the DSA is just a marketing blitz to boost the resume.  Why wasn’t the A to Z Program implemented during all of those years on the board and through the presidency?  Perhaps because the DSA wouldn’t have been bestowed right before a new ED/CEO was due to be announced.

Wake Up, NCRA,
Frank N. Sense

*Did the new president run into the hawker of recording devices at the Court Technology Conference on September 12-14 that was attended by a “broad expanse of crucial decision-makers” from court systems around the country?  Just wondering.

**Membership is still entitled to a full accounting of the building that we now understand from a reliable source was not fully paid for at the time of sale (like Prince — may he rest in peace — we’ll now refer to it as “the formerly-paid-off-building-once-owned-by-NCRA”).  Soooo … was a loan taken against that formerly-paid-off-building to pay off a golden parachute?  So many questions that need to be answered.