Chat From The War Zone

(From The Los Angeles Times -- By Chris Gaither)

YAHOO INC. has been talking like a major media company.

Today it will start acting like one.

With the hiring of blogger-journalist and veteran television correspondent KEVIN SITES to produce a multimedia website that will report on WARS AROUND THE WORLD, YAHOO is set to compete with TV NEWS.

Ten months ago LLOYD BRAUN, the former Chairman of THE ABC TELEVISION NETWORK's ENTERTAINMENT GROUP who now oversees YAHOO's EXPANDED MEDIA GROUP, began plotting the company's content strategy. Today, the Internet giant plans to announced the first of many original programs expected to come from THE YAHOO MEDIA GROUP HEADQUARTERS in SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA.

YAHOO, which for years recycled traditional media companies' work on THE WEB, has hired its first news gatherer. KEVIN SITES, who stirred international debate by filming A MARINE shooting a wounded IRAQI in
a FALLOUJA MOSQUE last fall, will spend the next year reporting from nearly three dozen WAR ZONES across the globe.

In an Internet-age twist on THE NIGHTLY NEWS REPORT, on September 26th he will begin filing video, audio and text dispatches to YAHOO NEWS each day and hold LIVE CHAT and VIDEOCONFERENCING SESSIONS from the world's most BRUTAL CONFLICTS.

The program, KEVIN SITES IN THE HOT ZONE, is the clearest evidence
yet that YAHOO feels ready to compete with TV networks for viewers and advertisers. A decade after the launch of the first commercial Internet browser, the medium is MATURING RAPIDLY enough to pit its biggest players against THE GIANTS OF OTHER MEDIA.

[Is it fitting that a guy named SITES would produce stuff on the Web?]

Tim Harmon and Barry Abrams, thanks for the post and the comment.

Chat From The War Zone