People of the Web

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Title slide from the People of the Web series

People of the Web is a weekly Yahoo! News feature series that which profiles the faces behind the Internet.^[1] It reports on World Wide Web content creators, particularly the ones "who are really changing the political, social and religious fabric," according to the show's host, award winning journalist Kevin Sites. The format includes both video and text stories. Sites cites the focus on the business aspect of web content, and the relative lack of coverage of web personalities as the motivation for the series.^[2]

Sites' previous project was a year-long series of stories for Yahoo! from various war zones around the word called "Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone", and he brings the same traveling video journalist style to this project.^[2] He is also using the same support crew from that series. Neeraj Khemlani, VP, Programming & Development for Yahoo! News & Info said they simply moved from putting a human face on war, to putting a human face on the Internet.^[3]

Gal Beckerman wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review that, "the idea of the series is so brilliant and filled with seemingly endless possibility that it’s amazing no one thought of it before."^[4]

The series premiered May 29, 2007. It has posted several feature stories including profiles on:

lifecasters Justin Kan and Justine Ezarik from Justin.tv
former child star turned evangelical Christian Kirk Cameron
gay-activist blogger Mike Rogers who specializes in outing closeted gay politicians
a grandfather/grandson duo hosting an online worldwide group hug
a convicted felon that leads a police watch dog group
San Francisco based video blogger Josh Wolf that addressed the question, "Can bloggers be journalists?"

[edit] References

^ Pemberton, Patrick S. (2007-10-19). Journalist and former Pismo resident Kevin Sites in SLO to promote book about life in war zones. San Luis Obispo Tribune. McClatchy Company. Retrieved on 2007-11-06. “After a year in the combat zone, Sites took on a project that was lighter and more commercially appealing to Yahoo: producing “People of the Web,” which profiles the faces behind the Internet.”
^ ^a ^b Johnson, Peter (2007-06-03). Reporter profiles the people behind the Web addresses. USA Today. Ganett. Retrieved on 2007-09-16. “Now, on a beat few news outlets have explored, Sites, a former network correspondent who joined Yahoo in 2005 to generate unique online "backpack" journalism, turns his attention to "People on the Web" (potw.news.yahoo.com), a combination of stand-alone text and video stories.”
^ Khemlan, Neeraj (2007-05-31). Meet the people of the Web. Yodel Anecdotal. Yahoo! News. Retrieved on 2007-09-16.
^ Beckerman, Gal. A Different Kind of Hot Zone. Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved on 2007-09-16. “In a series called “People of the Web,” Sites has been creating video/text stories about different individuals who have been doing interesting things on-line.”