The Steno News Network desk has a new voice behind it, and she's wearing bright pink.
Debra Farfan, RDR, CRR, CRC, CSR, CCR, founder of Realtime Depos & Trials and the voice behind Madam Reporter IRL, joined Steno's Adrian Cea for the latest Steno News Network segment. Adrian, in his signature wig and burgundy suit, opens the broadcast with the breaking news that a new co-anchor is joining him. Madam Reporter takes it from there, welcoming herself to the network with the kind of confidence that only a realtime reporter running a courtroom feed could pull off.
Her line sums it up better than we could: "From this moment on, we aren't just preserving the story. We are the story."
With nearly three decades of experience across state and federal court, complex litigation, and high-speed broadcast captioning, Debra built Realtime Depos & Trials on the idea that a clean, reliable realtime feed changes what a legal team can do in the room, and increasingly, what they can do with that transcript afterward. High-stakes depositions, trials, and arbitrations involving expert testimony and technical subject matter are exactly where an accurate spoken-word record earns its keep, whether that record is feeding a live cross-examination or a Transcript Genius review six months later.
Madam Reporter IRL is how she brings that world to an audience well beyond the deposition room or courtroom. Her platform is built around candid, unfiltered conversation among court reporters, captioners, and litigation support professionals, and it's grown into something bigger than a single feed: a training program for the next generation of realtime reporters. That combination of someone who takes the craft seriously and doesn't take herself too seriously made her the right person to hand the anchor chair to.
Her firsthand vantage point, paired with a willingness to say what she actually thinks, is a big part of why this partnership made sense for us. It's one thing to talk about supporting court reporters. It's another to bring someone into the fold who's already spent years doing exactly that, in public, on her own platform.
And this isn't a one-off. Debra is joining Steno in an ongoing collaboration to support our court reporting community, with Steno News Network as one part of that. Keep an eye out for her at the anchor desk in future segments, and stay tuned for more from this partnership as it develops.
Catch the full segment on Instagram, and give Madam Reporter a follow while you're there.