Yahoo!'s one man band

Kevin Sites is a force to be reckoned with. Sites is Yahoo's newest, and as of now, only, news reporter. Up until Sites, Yahoo relied on other news organizations, especially wire services, to provide coverage for the Yahoo news site. Sites will provide Yahoo with exclusive reporting from around the world for the next year - he started on September 26, 2005. Read a little about Sites from Media Week here.

I decided to take a look at Sites's page on Yahoo - Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone - to see if all the build-up about it was worth it. I think it was. When you click on the link to the Hot Zone, the first thing that comes up is a quick flash program, a nice intro, which takes you to the "front page" of Site's coverage. There is one big story up at the top accompanied by a large picture, and below are other articles and pictures, as well as video links and a "Keep Up with Kevin Sites" Map. So far he has been to two places in Africa, and one in the Middle East. I think the map is supposed to be interactive, so that you can click on it and see specifically where he has been, but it wasn't working for me today. The site itself is an example of what I think other news sites should strive to be, in terms of the multitude of video, audio, pictures and text available.

What I really find to be the most innovative and "force to be reckoned with" quality of this whole thing is the fact that the entire operation is based around one man. Aside from a three-member editorial team that helps Sites manage the operation as a whole, Sites is essentially a one-man band. He travels with state-of-the-art equipment, including multiple cameras (still and video), laptops, and phones, filing various stories each day which utilize multimedia to its fullest. Sites is truly a multimedia journalist.

But what makes this most interesting, aside from the highly interactive and attention-grabbing nature of the Hot Zone site, is the fact that Sites, aside from being a well-known war correspondant (according to his bio on the Hot Zone site), has also become well-known for his work as a blogger in recent years. The Hot Zone works with the blogger aspect to use it to its advantage. The About Kevin Sites page of the Hot Zone gives Sites' bio, says "Sites' controversial and award-winning war blog, www.kevinsites.net, was one of the first to combine text, digital images, and audio to provide readers with an intimate, behind-the-lines look at the war in Iraq and how it was being covered." This is the cornerstone of Sites' coverage for Yahoo. And in true blogger style, a long sidebar to the right of the bio sites a mission, as well as journalism goals and ideals that the site strives to reach, including "Transparency, Vulnerability, Empathy, and Solutions" - all four of which are ideals which originated in the blogging sphere.