BigShinyThing

Yahoo! has enlisted Kevin Sites, a former producer and correspondent for NBC and CNN, to produce a website that will report on war around the world. Sites is probably most famous for the footage he shot for NBC of a US marine shooting and killing an apparently unarmed Iraqi prisoner in Falluja last year.

The site will be called “Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone” and represents Yahoo!’s first major foray into original online video programming. The dispatches will begin on September 26th. Yahoo! is also building a large beachhead in Santa Monica to build relationships with Hollywood, both to buy content and to produce its own. It intends to tap into the rapidly growing demand for video advertising on the Internet and believes that war reporting is likely to be a huge growth area for attracting eyeballs.

The show will basically catalogue modern war fare. Sites intends to visit every place on earth that is defined by international organisations as a war or conflict zones. The list currently stands at around 36 countries. Sites will write a 600-800 word dispatch every day and produce a slide show of 5 to 10 digital photographs. He will also narrate audio travelogues and host regular online chats with Yahoo! users.

According to Sites, this format consisting of edited and unedited material will help to counter growing public distrust of network news. “We are a journalistic entity trying to do things in a responsible way you don’t always see on the Internet.”

The New York Times has the full story. Via Gawker.