Join the Shepherd History project and help preserve the Village of Shepherd’s stories for tomorrow’s historians

A few weeks ago, actress Viola Davis gave an acceptance speech during the Oscars which I feel best characterizes what it is that I hope to accomplish via the Shepherd Online site and The Shepherd Journal:

People ask me all the time, what kind of stories do you want to tell, Viola? And I say, exhume those bodies. Exhume those stories. The stories of the people who dreamed big and never saw those dreams to fruition. People who fell in love and lost. I became an artist — and thank God I did — because we are the only profession that celebrates what it means to live a life.

This part of her speech resonated with me the most because my goal is to capture and archive the stories behind the people who live in the community of Shepherd while there is still the opportunity. “Exhume” is a good word for it, because it does require some digging but mostly listening and ingenuity.

Where I disagree with her speech is where she said that acting is “the only profession that celebrates what it means to live a life.” There are probably plenty of other professions which do this to, but I’m certain that the two I’m most familiar with — journalists and historians — would be at the top of the list.

I’ve seen the pursuit of community history preservation and journalism blend together as stacks of The Shepherd Argus were being indexed and prepared to be scanned and digitized. When I was going through decades’ worth of news/history for Shepherd I began to wonder how the history we’re living now — what we would call “news” — would be preserved.

I decided to run a little bit of an experiment: focus more on the historic importance of the news I cover for the Shepherd community and make my mission more about preservation than just journalism. Tell stories that go deeper than the average news story.

The Shepherd Journal began in 2009 as a different kind of experiment on Facebook. Back then, I had named it Shepherd Today and envisioned it as an online user forum. I thought that people would post to it once they saw that it was available. I also wanted to see how easily I could grow a community on Facebook which was based around a real-life community. After a while, I changed to a more hands-on approach with the page, actively posting news that I saw online, and renamed the page The Shepherd Journal. I chose the name because I wanted to demonstrate that the page would be about telling the community’s stories, and not just quick snippets or memes.

Then, in March 2015, I covered the fire in downtown Shepherd. At first, I was only reposting the information that others were sharing, but as soon as I was able to I headed over to take pictures and see for myself what was happening. I kept gathering and sharing information about the fire even after the fire had been put out because somebody needed to do it, and The Shepherd Journal was already established on Facebook.

So, we have issues of The Shepherd Argus up until 2015. My goal is to pick up where the Argus left off and tell the Village of Shepherd’s story moving forward. But, I need help from others who might feel the same way, or have stories to tell. You don’t need to be a historian or a journalist in order to contribute.

The community’s archive post-2015 is being stored on a site I’ve called Shepherd Online. It can be found at a domain name owned by the Shepherd Area Historical Society, http://www.shepherdhistory.org. There is a page on the site where visitors can submit their news or stories, or they can send them to editor@shepherdhistory.org.

I have built a lot of opportunities for collaboration into the process of maintaining the website. There is a Slack group which anybody can join. Once it picks up, it will be a place to discuss upcoming events, and bounce around ideas for stories. The Shepherd Journal will become a publication I’m developing using a web applications called Gitbooks. Each self-contained issue will be readable on the web, downloadable as an ebook, or printable as a PDF.

Almost all of the pieces are in place for what I think will be a new community resource for news and history preservation. All I need now is a few more people who are willing to dig and share some stories.

I’ve shared a piece of my story. Next, I’d like to learn more about your dreams or goals. I’m looking for stories as well as collaborators. I can be reached via either a comment, a direct message, or an email to editor@shepherdhistory.org.

Thanks,

Jon Morgan

Vice President of the Shepherd Area Historical Society and Publisher of The Shepherd Journal

Originally published at Shepherd Online.