Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone for Yahoo

Longtime blogger and war correspondent Kevin Sites has signed a deal with Yahoo News to be the news aggregator's first official original content correspondent. Sites has worked for NBC News and CNN in the past, and has stoked controversy for his solo work at KevinSites.net. Now Sites has found a way to keep his independence as a journalist -- but with big distribution via Yahoo.

Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone is a special site at hotzone.yahoo.com that will officially launch near the end of September. The idea is that Sites will travel to all the hot spots of armed conflict throughout the world: Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, the Phillippines, etc. He will report as a backpack journalist, sending in text, photos, video and audio. Plus, he'll engage his audience with live chats.

According to the stated principles of the project: "We will be aggressive in pursuing the stories that are not getting mainstream coverage and we will put a human face on them. 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."

This is an experiment and site worth watching, and could be a foreshadowing of much more original journalism coming out of Yahoo. Also, there will be a Q&A with Kevin Sites & Scott Moore of Yahoo coming to OJR in the weeks ahead.