Time to play Roger Ebert: What were the greatest Flip news videos?

Explore Harvard's Nieman network Nieman Fellowships Nieman Lab Nieman Reports Nieman Watchdog Nieman Storyboard

The value of crowdsourcing can be more than mining social media for sources. nie.mn/JLgvek

Time to play Roger Ebert: What were the greatest Flip news videos?

On Friday, Justin wrote a brief appreciation of the Flip cam, the good-enough handheld video device that snuck into lots of reporters’ backpacks before being unceremoniously shut down last week.

In the comments, Ben Welsh of the Los Angeles Times asked a great question:

What was the best news video shot with a Flip cam? What was its Citizen Kane?

A great question — because as iconic as the Flip was in newsrooms on the online-video march, a device should be measured by what’s done with it, no?

So, even though Flips will still be used for years, we’re taking nominees. What were the great news videos shot with a Flip? The fire footage that make you feel the heat; the hallway interview that went gloriously astray; the Malick-style contemplative long takes?

Link to some of your favorites in the comments, and feel free to nominate your own work if you feel it’s been Flip Oscar-worthy. (Floscar-worthy?)

What to read next

Adrienne LaFrance May 21, 2012

Buzz Bissinger: Newspaper editors are “very cautious — too cautious”

The Friday Night Lights author reflects on how newspapers have changed, why editors need to take risks, and the sale of Philadelphia’s two largest newspapers.

http://www.digitalnewsdigest.com Chuck Nelson

I don’t know if it’s Oscar-worthy, but this Flip-generated video from Doral Chenoweth III of The Columbus Dispatch generated some buzz:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv-F5JnnGo0
Anonymous

Will have fond memories of the Flip – long before the company I work for built a TV studio and started taking video ‘seriously’ we had a lot of fun with them. The most popular video we ever published was a report from the G20 riots in 2009 – it wouldn’t have been possible for an untrained hack like me to produce it any other way: http://citywire.co.uk/money/citywire-joins-g20-protestors-gets-stuck-behind-police-lines/a335265

Definitely not Floscar-worthy (a lot of it now makes me cringe in fact!) but it paved the way for a lot of good stuff. RIP, Flip.
Mark Loundy

This is about as significant as asking about the best do-it-yourself project completed with a Stanley crescent wrench.
http://wideaperture.net/blog/ Josh Braun

I come to this late, but I’d point to some of the work done by The Rachel Maddow Show. They distributed FlipCams to all of their staff, and used them to do original field reporting that’s normally difficult on a cable show budget. An example would be the two-person reporting trip they took to Arizona to report on immigration issues and the “Papers Please” bill. When they do take a road trip with a professional camera crew, they’re also able to send their non-on-air-talent staff out into the field with FlipCams to capture a lot more in a day than they otherwise would with only the union crew.