By Chris Marlowe
Yahoo! Inc. made a commitment to original content with Monday's announcement that veteran war correspondent Kevin Sites will be creating an exclusive ongoing interactive presentation of global news.
"Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone" will use the best of traditional news media along with text, video, photos, audio and user interactivity, said Lloyd Braun, head of Yahoo!'s media group, adding that it will provide an unprecedented source of information as well as enable the user "to become personally invested in Kevin's journey."
Sites will begin his year-long floating assignment Sept. 26, during which he will travel solo to armed conflicts around the world.
"This is a dream job," Sites said. "With broadcast news I could reach 10 million people on a good night, and lots of them were over 70. With Yahoo! providing the platform, I'll be able to speak to people of all nations and give a new dimension to journalism."
As a correspondent for CNN and NBC, Sites has covered some of the world's most dangerous places. He also pioneered the use of battlefield blogs, gaining international attention for his footage of a U.S. Marine shooting an apparently unarmed Iraqi inside a Fallujah mosque in November.
Sites will travel alone, equipped with digital cameras, a laptop, satellite phones and solar backup power sources. He said traveling solo provides maximum flexibility and gives him more intimate access to his choice of subjects. "It's an incredible opportunity to help develop the next step in the evolution of journalism, and to tell a different set of stories more completely," he said.
Sites wants to convey aspects of the story that he feels the traditional media overlooks, such as his immediate environment, the lives of the people he is covering and the daily dangers to which he and they are exposed. On the Fallujah shooting, for example, he used his blog to explain not only what happened but also the nuances and his state of mind.
"I can bring my camera anywhere, even where there aren't cameras today," Sites said. "I don't want to spend the rest of my life going to war zones, but the important thing is that in our careers we all want to feel like we're making a difference. This project is the most important thing I will do in my life."
Yahoo! media group vice president content operations Scott Moore said Yahoo! will present "Hot Zone" against a rich background that includes chat sessions and e-mail with maps, historical background and links to further information.
"We will be creating conversations with the audience around what he's doing, and that's something the Internet is uniquely capable of providing," he said.
Sites will contribute a 600- to 800-word report each day accompanied by a slide show of about 10 photographs. He also will post traditional video reports, fairly unedited footage, audio commentaries and responses to comments on message boards from members of the public.
The Yahoo! News team will work with Sites to cover conflicts in six regions: Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Asia, the Caribbean and South America. The areas of conflict are defined by using the standards of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, a leading authority on political-military conflict that is not affiliated with any government.
