I had seen projects like this in a magazines and special booklets and I thought it was really neat.

Newspapers record history on a daily or weekly basis, and if you look at the continuum of what you do over a year, you paint this picture of a community and you can look back at the events of that year and say, Oh, this is who we are.

At the end of the day, we're storytellers when we're in journalism, whether we're writers, or whether we're photographers, or whether we're broadcasters or whether word bloggers or whether we're social media gurus.

We tell stories, and sometimes the stories are big, and sometimes they are really tiny.

What appealed to me about the day in the life concept is that this is just ordinary people.

It's just run of the mill stuff.

It's nothing fancy, it's nothing special, it's just who we are on a given day and it freezes that they in time and space.

And it provides context for who we are as a community.

I thought that was really neat idea.

I was clearly aware that we didn't have the resources as a small weekly newspaper to do a project like that.

And the South Dakota Newspaper Association had its headquarters on the campus of South Dakota State University.

And since we were there, we had a really neat working relationship with the journalism Department.

And that's where I met Frank.

And so when Frank and I were having a conversation at one of these gatherings on the campus, I pitched the idea to him and I said, listen, I want to do this, and Freeman, do you think you and your students would be interested in it?

He jumped at it.

Tim approached me and said, would you consider doing a project A day in the life of well, and I'm going a day in the life?

OK?Not sure.

But little did I know and then we got into it.

We started talking and I approached Doctor Lee and I said do you think you can we do that?

Dick says Se an we wanted to take pictures every hour on the hour and then we decided that it was best to bring the kids in on it.

We were there the night before we ended up getting motel rooms there and then we had a breakfast in the morning and we all sat together and we met at.

City Hall I believe, was the place that we decided it was going to be our little little battleground So I never taken photos professionally.

It only take him in my photo class, you know, and shared with family and friends and.

I just remember we got to that town you know the night before.

We stayed at hotel.

We kind of map things out and then we were all over that town, we had certain places that we were supposed to go that we needed to go that were really important to community.

But we also had the freedom to kind of explore and see what happened and really kind of look for those opportunities that weren't as obvious that were kind of sml town life.

Back then, experiential learning was kind of a new thing and I'm an old-fashioned newspaper guy, particularly have a love for weekly newspapers kind of the foundation nuts and bolts of Community journalism, so the fact that it was documenting a day in the life of a small community was pretty neat.

All the photos and copy captions came back and then we, I think in one afternoon 3 hours we laid it all out and that are really creative activity and writing.

Cut lines and such.

It was as I look back over my 30 years here.

That was the highlight.

It was just one of those creative endeavors where the juices were flowing and everybody was involved and it was really a fun project.

A really unique opportunity for us to go somewhere and dive into a place.

We had done a lot of assignments that were shorter term in and out kind of things.

We did some really great photography stuff in Brookings that I was really proud of, but we haven't got to tell the whole story and I think as people who were connected into journalism telling that story was really important to us.

So getting an opportunity to do that in Freeman was really great.

We got to know some people we got to follow some of them throughout their day.

We got to talk to them for a little bit longer than we had in some.

Of our other assignments, so I really appreciated getting to know some of those people until a little bit more about their life, so I'm learning to be a great photographer, right?

I'm not there yet.

I'm learning and who better to learn from the best Frank Klock, so I shadowed him for part of the day.

It wasn't a big part of the day, just a little bit and one of the places that we ended up with Lions Park and on that day that were volunteers, a group of elderly men who were doing maintenance on the grounds.

And they had their rakes, and they had their shovels.

And whatever other tools they were using.

And Frank and I were there, ready to shoot it, and one of the gentleman working with a rake stopped because he had clearly gotten tired and he propped the rake up right with the handle here and he rested his chin on the top of the handle and Frank, standing right next to me.

He says there is a shot and he reached into his camera bag to get a different lens 'cause he wanted it to be the best shot that you could possibly do.

And by the time he got the lens on.

The moment was over and he never got the shot.

The reason that had such an impact on me is because Frank recognized a great photograph before he had even taken it.

An I learned a lot in that moment that sometimes the best photography is the photography you're not looking for, but I remember being.

Thrilled to be there.

To be participating.

To be excited to be just spending an entire day doing photography.

I mean, what more as a young photographers cooler than that then just sunrise or sunset camera in hand.

Looking for pictures and making pictures.

As a small town girl.

I love tht we went to Freeman because it felt like home.

These are the people I was used to seeing in my daily life.

These are the people I felt like I had grown up with and sometimes those are the stories that aren't told and so it was nice to be able to go go home so to speak and do that in Freeman.

The impact of it is the minute detail that makes our communities what they are, were always looking for.

The big story.

That's what we, as journalists are trained to do were not used to looking in.

The peripherals were not used to looking around the corner or in the other room or in the crack in the wall, but those are the moments it's those ladies in the lunch room getting food ready for the kids that day.

It's the Baker and the Baker shop at 5:00 AM.

Making rolls for the breakfast crowd.

It's the garbage truck driver.

That's the stuff that makes our towns tick, and that's the stuff that we don't pay attention to.

And what day in the life taught me 25 years ago is that stuff is damn important.

I remember spending a lot of time in the house as she is trying on her prom dress.

We took some different pictures using different mirrors.

That memory was really, really fun.

It was an opportunity to learn from people who are way further along in their photography experience than I was to try out things that I never would have tried before.

I'm sure there are people who remember the original, you know, we page through that thing and we see people who are still working in those same roles.

You know, many of the people who are pictured on those pages.

There are no longer with us.

Many of the buildings there have changed or are gone, but there's a lot that is the same.

We were in the store across the street, a smaller store I had just come back.

I had been back in town here for I think it was nine years then and came over and took over the store from my dad and it was fun.

Exciting time and it's really exciting to look back at the old tabloid to see all the pictures from back then.

I was paging through and I saw my dad was down having coffee at AMPride and I was making an arrangement at the time I thought it was an awesome idea to promote Freeman 'cause.

Freeman has a lot of great assets to offer to the community and the surrounding communities.

My Grand Father bought the bank in the 60s.

My dad was president and CEO for many years after my grandfathers passing in 91.

And my father passed away in 2015, so that Clock was on the original bank building since 1899.

So now it is completely computerized.

It was my dad's toy until he passed.

He controlled the Carolinas, controlled the music.

Do you remember what your dad's reaction was to see in that photo?

Imagine he kind of thought he was the king of the world I don't know.

If you look at the old publication, there are cut lines, but there aren't bylines.

We really wanted to be a group project.

We want to make sure that it was a team effort that one photographers work wasn't more prominent than another.

So really, they're working as a team to make this publication come to life.

It was that camaraderie amongst creative people.

There's no competition that I've found on that day.

It was people helping everybody find the best shot, find the best way to tell the story.

And that really translates with a lot of the creatives that I've gotten to work with throughout the rest of my career.

There isn't a lot of ego, or there isn't a lot of I can do this better than you can it say.

Let me bring you along in the journey.

And let's do it together and I really appreciate it.

Out of this group, the team building that we did the working with, the other students, many of them who I still consider friends and in contact with.

Not as tightly is probably I would like to, but we're still in contact and I see them have seen them in the past few years and just having that experience that real world experience of.

Producing all those images and giving it to the community.

There we go.

Let's just to.

A great way to touch touch the past a little bit as a place that values history.

Those are all the things that we are trying to preserve to be able to capture a whole.

Community in one day.

It's a. It's an amazing thing.

I mean, what would we give to have that from you know, 1900?

It was kind of a joy to look back and remember some of the people that have come and gone from town and that made an impact here.

Frank Klock actually contacted us a number of years ago.

Asking if we would be interested in doing it again.

And we said yes, but anytime you do a project of this magnitude, there are a lot of logistics that need to get worked out and I just don't think either of us were in a place to get those details worked out at the time.

And so it never went anywhere.

But that's sort of planted the seed maybe five years ago.

I think Jeremy and I started sort of noodling around with the idea of saying, wouldn't that be fun?

and I wonder where the shooters are?

Who were here and all of that?

But it wasn't realistically until Frank Robertson came back.

And.

He made the initial contact.

Why had tripped across?

I think one of the photographs from 25 years ago.

I don't remember where I saw the photograph and it triggered that memory and I thought it would be really cool to go back and do that project again.

And so I did some more looking into the project in realize that the anniversary date coming up would be exactly 25 years, and I thought, well, what a perfect time to go back and redo this project.

We need to do it so I talked to Doctor Dailey and thought what his opinions were and he was excited.

He was onboard, talked with Doctor Olson and he was all on board.

It was such a neat neat project.

Back then I think everybody involved in it probably still talks about that and remembers that is kind of the highlight of their their career here and then just to enter to redo it 25 years later with some of the same folks.

You know, Doctor Dailey and Frank and Jeremy is just really cool.

Deja vu thing to just kind of do it over again.

And so they reached out to Jeremy.

and I said, What do you think he called me?

And he said, you realize that we're at 25 years.

Like, yeah we aren't we and he said we should do it again and.

It was the perfect storm that the timing was right.

He was on board.

Everyone was really excited to get the project rolling.

A great story is a great story and I'm just excited to tell the story of April 2019 and Freeman.

So basically we started out the project, just kind of planning out where we wanted to go, basically just trying to see.

What kind of things needed to be highlighted in the community during that day?

So like certain businesses that we thought were kind of interesting, which I just stick to the schedule as much as we could.

But then we also did a lot of things like on the fly, just going here in there.

We also heard things.

We communicated the messaging platform basically and.

If people had found different things are going on, then we tried to head over there and document them too, so it's a little bit chaotic.

Trying to stick to a schedule, but then still just kind of letting everything happen organically.

We had to get to know the people that we were taking photos, so we also had to ask for their name.

Kind of learn a little bit about them so that when we did write the cut lines later on we knew who they were and what they were doing and what their role is in the community.

You know we're awful, proud of our town.

We've got a lot here and it's been great to see a lot of the younger generation coming back to take over businesses just like my son Brad is.

And a lot of the farm kids are coming back to take over the farms and different businesses.

So so yeah, I think Freeman's doing good and hopefully we can keep doing that just to see the changes and the on going of what's happened over the last 20 five years, and that the businesses are still thriving.

I started going through our photos and picking out kind of the best ones that really highlighted the moment then what happened throughout the day.

There my mass comm 311 news editing class basically design much of the front part of the publication.

I think we designed all the pages that didn't have advertising on it, or at least most of the pages that didn't have advertising on it and the reason being one it's a nice palette to have no ads and the students were able to.

Put more photos on and just get a better idea of how you go about designing photo pages.

There are many great photos of photography students take a lot of good stuff so my students had a good time learning how to showcase those photos.

How to make them big and in some instances these students had double truck pages, so 2 pages together and could could.

Could run those photos really big.

One of my favorite photos were of the freemen lunchroom at elementary school, one of the girls I got her like.

Making a face like, while eating pizza and I really enjoyed that one just showing her energy so they were probably about 16 students and they had something like 32 pages.

They're part of it was to one pick the photos to write the cut lines 3 design the pages so they had to put the folio on, which is basically the date line and and what the publication is.

And then they also had little graphics of tick tock clocks and essentially.

Our students designed the first half or 3/4 of the book.

Everybody gotta look at the old one.

They could take some cues from that if they wanted to, or they could branch out on their on their own and try something different.

And everybody you know did a Little Mix of that.

Frank Robertson asked me if I would be willing to.

Step in and provide guidance on social media for the project.

On the day of I accompanied the group to Freeman and spend the day there in the City Hall headquarters.

Posting things on multiple social media sites.

I repurposed a lot of the students visual content, particularly because I was working with.

Instagram and Facebook which are especially friendly to that.

I did also share some things on Twitter.

Hi guys, so it is Caitn and Mariah here at the Salem Mennonite home an it is their happy hour currently and so were gonna go around.

We're going to talk to a few of the residents while they're enjoying their beverages and see what they like about Freeman, what they have been doing while being here.

The Freemen Courier gave me access to all of its social media.

Trying to take advantage of what the audience there was already used to see Here at Meridian corner in Freeman, South Dakota.

Freeman is the host of Cheslik Festival in the summer time and it like actually originated here in this corner of South Dakota.

So we figured, why not try some?

like at the local favorite place.

It's gave everyone hands on experience with a project that was of great interest to a community here in South Dakota.

Something that happened that was especially touching at the end was when Jeremy Waldner, the publisher of the paper, talked with the students as we were packing up to leave and how much he talked with them about how much the project meant to him.

And you know, was was visibly emotional about it and hearing from someone who was high school student for the first one.

And then came back as the publisher.

And this time it was just really, really great to see I actually grew up like in a small town, so community is something that's always been really important to me.

So the day in the life of Freemen project was really exciting for me just getting to immerse myself in another small town, and.

Get to know the community a little bit better and everybody was very welcoming really just getting to capture what small town life is all about.

All of the things that we keep hearing about journalists being enemies of state and the fake news.

Accusations they did so much good that day being out in the community and let letting people see what journalists actually do.

These are not enemies of the state.

These are people who are covering your communities and finding the news that's important to you and your community, and I think our students did a great service in that regard.

It was a great experience for the students and the reason is because it was something that is real and we call that experiential learning.

I can come up with all sorts of exercises based on my time in the real world, and they're fine.

There's nothing wrong with them.

Students learn from those two, but I think they get extra jazzed about something that's real that they know that wow readers in Freeman are going to be able to take a look at my work.

So I think it just gives them a different level of excitement.

and I think even students who didn't really like doing design, and there are some of them in that class.

I think they had a pretty good time.

Doing it, it was a really real experience.

It was a real publication for a real town and that community aspect too.

I thought was really fun, just capturing all of that and getting to know all the people in Freeman.

and I don't think you can ask for a better student involved project for a class.

Then something like that.

'cause it is real world experience.

It had immediate payoff with reaction on social media and we were using the newspapers accounts and then.

Followed by the print product that was produced with all of the work, so it's it's just to me.

It's exactly what we strive to provide with for our students, but we have students do internships.

We talk a lot about experiential learning.

Lie the day in life of Freemen Project back then and even now still serves that same purpose of students, really taking those skills and applying them professionally.

I'm thankful for the people who were involved in this project 25 years ago I'm grateful for the students that I got to work alongside and make those memories with.

I'm thankful for Tim Waltner and Frank Klock for being the friends in the mentors.

They were 25 years ago for creating this project.

To give us this foundation.

That many of us launched our careers from and to be able to take that.

And build upon that 25 years later and create a whole new experience for students.

New generation of students and storytellers.

What can be beautiful about a project like this is so much of our work right now is immediate.

Are we live tweeting it?

Facebook livee we're taking all of the little bits and pieces and making them available for immediate consumption.

But you don't necessarily get to see the whole picture.

You don't get to see how one part of the story moves us to the next and moves us to the next as a whole collection outside of places like this.

And so I think it's wonderful to be able to encircle both of those together and get that immediacy.

Get some attention.

Get some excitement about it, but then also be able to see the whole piece at one time.

It's a nice balance between what's traditional and what's new.

Kind of an emotional guy.

I will forever be grateful.

For the partnership.

That we have a South Dakota State University that was true 25 years ago.

There was never a question in Dk Lee's mind.

Or Frank Klock's mind that this shouldn't be done.

It was always yes.

And that's proven to be the case.

Here again.