New York - Yahoo, hoping to attract younger audiences to its news site, is making its first major foray into original content with a brash, one-man effort to illuminate the world's armed conflicts.
The internet company's media group has hired Kevin Sites, a 42-year-old war correspondent who has worked for NBC and CNN, to spend a year traveling the globe and telling the human stories behind some of the world's most protracted struggles.
A multi-media website, called "Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone" (hotzone.yahoo.com), will include the reporter's news stories, television-style dispatches and audio-blog entries beginning on September 26.
Taking advantage of the interactive nature of the internet, Sites also plans to hold live chat sessions with visitors to the site.
"We're at the nexus of a new wave of global journalism," Sites said at a press briefing in New York on Monday, where video, photography, audio and the written word can be brought together to tell the kind of narrative-driven stories that are propelling interest in news events, such as Hurricane Katrina.
Traveling alone as a kind of adventure newsman, Sites said he plans to focus on untold stories in conflicts that aren't making headlines.
He expects to visit 31 countries, beginning with several in Africa. However, he does plan to return to Iraq in November to report from Falluja on the one-year anniversary of the siege there.
Sites is perhaps best known for a controversial NBC News report he filmed of a US Marine shooting a wounded Iraqi insurgent in a mosque in Falluja last year.
Sites will carry a 50-pound backpack containing an array of electronics, including a satellite phone, laptop and digital video camera and transmission equipment.
"The idea is to be able to move fast and light," he said.
Scott Moore, Yahoo Media's vice president of content operations, said the company has more plans for original news content that take advantage of the internet's strengths, along the lines of this initiative.
He said Yahoo does not plan to build a traditional news-gathering operation or compete in the news business. Rather, it's looking for compelling content that will encourage Yahoo's millions of users to come to the site more often and stay longer.
Yahoo plans to support the site through advertising sales and is already in discussions with marketing departments at household-name companies in the technology and auto industries, he said.
