From aggregator news, Yahoo plans to generate hot content aimed to attract youngsters.
Barely days after it made bad news for being instrumental in Chinese authorities jailing a journalist, Yahoo is in the thick and thin of news once again. The Internet giant has hired its first journalist and will now be generating multimedia content.
Yahoo has hired veteran television correspondent, Kevin Sites, to produce a multimedia website that will report on wars around the world. The website, called "Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone" (hotzone.yahoo.com) will focus entirely on his travels as a war correspondent and use nearly every kind of format the Internet allows. His reports will begin on September 26. Hot Zone is Yahoo's first foray into the original news reporting business.
The site will feature 600-800 word dispatches and slide shows of 5-10 photographs every day. It will also include audio travelogues, a message board and regular online chats with Sites. Over one year, Sites will visit every war or conflict zone as defined by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and some additional criteria created by Yahoo. The list consists of 36 countries. Sites will start his travels in Africa, and hoped to be in Iraq in November, for the first anniversary of the invasion of Fallujah.
On his travels for Yahoo, Sites will carry a Canon digital still camera and three small video recorders, including one that fits on a headband. He will also carry a small Apple PowerBook on which he can write as well as edit photos and video, and several satellite telephones to send his dispatches back to Yahoo's Santa Monica office. And, he will have solar panels to charge his equipment where electricity is scarce.
His carefully constructed travel ensemble includes a rolling suitcase filled with lightweight clothing treated with insect repellent, a sleeping bag and a custom backpack that contains an array of gadgets that would, as the New York times described, put James Bond to shame. Sites, who has worked as a producer and correspondent for NBC and CNN, is most well-known for a videotape he shot for NBC of a marine shooting and killing an apparently unarmed Iraqi prisoner at a mosque in Fallujah last year. Sites is a blogger as well (www.kevinsites.net).
The move signals a major shift for Yahoo, which until now has been an aggregator of news from more than 100 outlets. Yahoo News, which features a news search function that scours more than 8,000 news sources on the Internet, said its goal is to set new standards for gathering and delivering news. Yahoo News, the third most popular news site in the US, never needed a reporter or created stories.
"I'd say the toughest audience to get right now in news is the 18-to-34 year olds – almost all of the network and cable news programmes skew older than 50," Lloyd Braun, head of Yahoo's media group, said. "I think that younger demographic is going to find this appealing," said Braun, a former chairman of the ABC television network. "There is a strong desire among that generation to feel like there is transparency, that they themselves have a voice they can express."
That slant is clear from the way Hot Zone has started advertising itself. "One Man. A World of Conflict." and a banner saying "Coming late September" looks more like an advertisement for a new action movie than the announcement of high quality journalism, wrote Anna-Maria Mende on editorsweblog.org.
There are promises on the Hot Zone site. Yahoo pledges to abide by the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists, and wants to seek and report the truth, minimise harm, act independently, and be accountable.
Yahoo has coined a new term to describe Sites SoJo (solo journalist), and says "We will not chase headlines nor adhere to pack journalism but vigorously pursue the stories in front of and behind the conflict, the small stories that when strung together illustrate a more complete picture." The thrust is apparently more on sensation, than on any in-depth reportage. As many as 36 countries in 365 days is no joke.
Whether Yahoo is making light of something as sensitive and intricate as conflict can be anybody's guess.
