Kevin Sites

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Kevin Sites
Kevin Sites speaking at Yahoo! about his new book
Occupation	Journalist and first news correspondent, Yahoo
Website www.kevinsites.net

Kevin Sites is Yahoo! News' first correspondent. His current project is People of the Web, a series of feature profiles on the people behind websites, viral videos and online phenomena. Sites began his career at Yahoo! with the award-winning website Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone. Before coming to Yahoo!, he spent a career in television journalism, including five years covering wars and disasters around the world.

1 Background and journalism career
2 Reporting from the Middle East
3 Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone
4 People of the Web
5 Awards and recognition
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Background and journalism career

Sites is a respected war correspondent who began covering global war and disaster in 2000, reporting for several national television networks.^[1]

In 2005, Sites was hired by Yahoo! to be its first correspondent for Yahoo! News. He spent one year traveling to 22 war zones in the world, reporting on victims in conflict for the web site Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone.

Sites helped pioneer solo journalism/video journalism, or (SoJo),^[1] often working completely alone, traveling and reporting without a crew. Kevin Sites carries a backpack of portable digital technology to write, film and transmit multimedia reports.

Sites' assignments have brought him to nearly every region of the world, including the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, South America, and Eastern Europe.

Sites grew up in Ohio and currently lives in California.

[edit] Reporting from the Middle East

On April 11, 2003, as a CNN correspondent in Iraq, Sites was captured by Saddam Hussein's Fedayeen militia. One day after they were captured their Kurdish translator negotiated their release.

In November 2004, as an embedded correspondent for NBC, he recorded a US Marine shooting a wounded and apparently unarmed Iraqi captive lying on the floor in a mosque in Fallujah. After the footage was released to the television network pool, it was shown around the world. As a result, Sites received both adulation and hate mail for taping the video. [1]. In an open letter to the Marines with whom he was embedded, Sites gave his own account of what he witnessed and explained his reasons for releasing the video [2]. Marine prosecutors did not prosecute the soldier because they believed the Iraqi captive was a threat [3].

[edit] Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone

In late 2005, Sites set out to cover every war zone in the world for Yahoo! News. The coverage was published on a web site called Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone. According to the Hot Zone page, Sites' mission was "to cover every armed conflict in the world within one year, and in doing so to provide a clear idea of the combatants, victims, causes, and costs of each of these struggles - and their global impact."

The Hot Zone project concluded with Sites' coverage of the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict of 2006. Currently, updates on Hot Zone stories and themes are periodically posted on the Hot Zone page. Recent posts include an update on Sites' most popular story from the Hot Zone, a report on an Afghan child bride.

[edit] People of the Web

Main article: People of the Web

After the Hot Zone project was completed, Sites began working on a domestic feature series profiling the unique voices from the online world called "People of the Web." A new profile is posted on People of the Web weekly.

[edit] Awards and recognition

In 2007, Sites won a National Headliner Award for Independent Online Journalism, a Webby for his video coverage of the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, and a citation of excellence from the Overseas Press Club for best web coverage of international affairs.

Sites was honored with the Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism for the mosque video ^[1] and was additionally nominated for the national Emmy Award. Sites was also honoured by the magazine Wired, receiving the magazine's RAVE Award for his popular blog. He was also awarded the Daniel Pearl Award for courage and integrity in Journalism by the Los Angeles Press Club in 2006.^[2]

Time Magazine names the Hot Zone as one of its 50 Coolest Websites and Forbes Magazine listed Sites as one of The Web Celeb 25, "the biggest, brightest and most influential people on the web today."