Kevin Sites

Last updated

Kevin Sites
Kevin Sites war reporter speaking at Yahoo!.jpg
Kevin Sites speaking about his then-new book at a Yahoo! conference.
Born1963/4 [1]
Geneva, Ohio, United States
NationalityAmerican
Occupation(s)Author
Freelance journalist
Website kevinsitesreports.com

Kevin Sites is an American author and freelancer journalist. He has spent nearly a decade covering news for global wars and disasters for ABC, NBC, CNN, and Yahoo! News. Dubbed by the trade press as the "granddaddy" [2] of backpack journalists, Sites helped blaze the trail for intrepid reporters who work alone, carrying only a backpack of portable digital devices to shoot, write, edit, and transmit multimedia reports from the world's most dangerous places. His first book, [3] In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars (Harper Perennial-October 2007), shares his effort to put a human face on global conflict by reporting from every major war zone in one year.

Contents

In 2009, Sites was one of four cast members of the reality television series Expedition Africa on the History channel. The eight-part series followed Sites and three explorers as they retraced the journey of Henry Morton Stanley in his quest to find David Livingstone. It was this journey that allegedly ended with the famous phrase, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"

Background and journalism career

While Sites spent most of his early career producing and reporting for television network news with staff positions at ABC, NBC and CNN, he left the networks for the Internet in 2005, hired by Yahoo! to be its first correspondent for Yahoo! News. He spent one year traveling to all the major war zones in the world, reporting for his web site "Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone", unique at the time for its multi-media mix of text, video and still images in its storytelling.

As a pioneer of the "SoJo" method of solo journalism/video journalism, [4] or backpack journalism, Sites helped to galvanize the idea of the modern, mobile digital correspondent, traveling and reporting without a crew, carrying a backpack of portable digital technology to write, videotape and transmit his multimedia reports.

Sites' assignments have brought him to nearly every region of the world, including Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, South America, and Eastern Europe.

Sites grew up in Ohio and currently lives in Hong Kong. He is now a professor at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre of the University of Hong Kong teaching bachelor and masters programmes.

Reporting from the Middle East

On April 11, 2003, as a CNN correspondent in Iraq, Sites was captured by Saddam Hussein's Fedayeen militia. One day after they were captured, their Kurdish translator negotiated their release.

In November 2004, as an embedded correspondent for NBC, he recorded a US Marine shooting and killing a wounded and apparently unarmed Iraqi captive lying on the floor in a mosque in Fallujah. After the footage was released to the television network pool, all the American television networks censored the actual shooting, while other international media outlets broadcast the uncut version. Sites received both adulation and hate mail for taping the video. In his book, Sites says he initially supported censoring the video to avoid a possible violent backlash, but writes that he quickly realized that it was the wrong decision and helped confuse the American public by not giving them the full context of the shooting through the uncensored videotape. [5] A few days after the shooting, Sites reported the story again in his personal blog, giving a detailed account of what he witnessed and explaining his reasons for releasing the video. The Marine was not charged in the shooting, and further investigations became impossible when a Marine Corps jet destroyed the mosque a few days later. A Marine spokesperson says it was not deliberately targeted.. [5]

Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone

In late 2005, Sites set out to cover every war zone in the world for Yahoo! News. The coverage was published on a web site called "Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone". According to the Hot Zone page, Sites' mission was "to cover every armed conflict in the world within one year, and in doing so to provide a clear idea of the combatants, victims, causes, and costs of each of these struggles – and their global impact."

The Hot Zone project concluded with Sites' coverage of the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict of 2006. Currently, updates on Hot Zone stories and themes are periodically posted on the Hot Zone page. Recent posts include an update on Sites' most popular story from the Hot Zone, a report on an Afghan child bride.

People of the Web

After the Hot Zone project was completed, Sites began working on a domestic feature series profiling the unique voices from the online world, called "People of the Web." A new profile was posted every week until the series was discontinued in 2008.

Awards and recognition

Sites was recently selected as a 2010 Nieman Fellow, a prestigious journalism fellowship at Harvard University. In September 2008, Sites was awarded Manchester College's 2008 Innovator of the Year Award. [6] In 2007, Sites won a National Headliner Award for Independent Online Journalism, a Webby for his video coverage of the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, and a citation of excellence from the Overseas Press Club for best web coverage of international affairs.[ citation needed ]

Sites was honored with the Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism for the mosque video [4] and was additionally nominated for the national Emmy Award. Sites was also honoured by Wired magazine, receiving the magazine's RAVE Award for his popular blog. He was also awarded the Daniel Pearl Award, for courage and integrity in journalism, by the Los Angeles Press Club in 2006. [7]

Time magazine names the Hot Zone as one of its "50 Coolest Websites", and Forbes magazine listed Sites as one of "The Web Celeb 25", "the biggest, brightest and most influential people on the web today"[ citation needed ].

He won the Edward R. Murrow Award in 1999 for his contributions to NBC's coverage of the war in Kosovo.

Sites is often cited by former CNN anchor Daryn Kagan in media stories as her inspiration to launch her eponymous web site, DarynKagan.com. [ permanent dead link ]

Related Research Articles

David Jerome Bloom was an American television journalist until his sudden death in 2003 after a deep vein thrombosis (DVT) became a pulmonary embolism at the age of 39.

Anne Longworth Garrels was an American broadcast journalist who worked as a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, as well as for ABC and NBC, and other media.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Collingwood (journalist)</span> Broadcast journalist

Charles Collingwood was an American journalist and war correspondent. He was an early member of Edward R. Murrow's group of foreign correspondents that was known as the "Murrow Boys". During World War II, he covered Europe and North Africa for CBS News. Collingwood was also among the early ranks of television journalists who included Walter Cronkite, Eric Sevareid, and Murrow himself.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kevin Corke</span> American journalist

Kevin Corke is an American journalist and is presently a White House Correspondents' Association member for Fox News in Washington D.C. Corke has covered four U.S. administrations. Previously, he was a national news correspondent based in Washington, D.C. for NBC News from 2004 to 2008. While much of his work there involved coverage of the Bush Administration as a member of the White House Press Corps, Corke also frequently reported from The Pentagon, U.S. Supreme Court and other locations in Washington, D.C. Corke figured prominently in Fox's coverage of the 2020 summer protests and previously was part of NBC's coverage of the Virginia Tech shooting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fallujah during the Iraq War</span> American bombardment of Fallujah, Iraq

The United States bombardment of Fallujah began in April 2003, one month after the beginning of the invasion of Iraq. In April 2003 United States forces fired on a group of demonstrators who were protesting against the US presence. US forces alleged they were fired at first, but Human Rights Watch, who visited the site of the protests, concluded that physical evidence did not corroborate US allegations and confirmed the residents' accusations that the US forces fired indiscriminately at the crowd with no provocation. 17 people were killed and 70 were wounded. In a later incident, US soldiers fired on protesters again; Fallujah's mayor, Taha Bedaiwi al-Alwani, said that two people were killed and 14 wounded. Iraqi insurgents were able to claim the city a year later, before they were ousted by a siege and two assaults by US forces. These events caused widespread destruction and a humanitarian crisis in the city and surrounding areas. As of 2004, the city was largely ruined, with 60% of buildings damaged or destroyed, and the population at 30%–50% of pre-war levels.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hala Gorani</span> American journalist (born 1970)

Hala Basha-Gorani is an American journalist, working as a correspondent for NBC News. Previously she was an anchor and correspondent for CNN International, based in London. She is also a war correspondent. She previously anchored CNN's Hala Gorani Tonight weeknights at 8 p.m. CET. Gorani co-hosted Your World Today with Jim Clancy until February 2009 and then International Desk until April 2014 from CNN's Atlanta headquarters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Ware</span> Australian journalist

Michael Ware is an Australian journalist formerly working in CNN and was for several years based in their Baghdad bureau. He joined CNN in May 2006, after five years with sister publication, Time. His last on-air appearance for the network was in December 2009.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Engel</span> American journalist and author

Richard Engel is an American journalist and author who is the chief foreign correspondent for NBC News. He was assigned to that position on April 18, 2008, after serving as the network's Middle East correspondent and Beirut bureau chief. Before joining NBC in May 2003, Engel reported on the start of the 2003 war in Iraq for ABC News as a freelance journalist in Baghdad.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brian Ross (journalist)</span> American investigative journalist (born 1948)

Brian Elliot Ross is an American investigative journalist who served as the Chief Investigative Correspondent for ABC News until 2018. He reported for ABC World News Tonight with David Muir, Nightline, Good Morning America, 20/20, and ABC News Radio. Ross joined ABC News in July 1994 and was fired in 2018. His investigative reports have often covered government corruption. From 1974 until 1994, Ross was a correspondent for NBC News.

Jonathan Dube is an American digital media executive.

Video journalism or videojournalism is a form of journalism, where the journalist shoots, edits and often presents their own video material.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen Farrell (journalist)</span> Irish and British journalist

Stephen Farrell is a journalist who works for Reuters news agency. He holds both Irish and British citizenship. Farrell worked for The Times from 1995 to 2007, reporting from Kosovo, India, Afghanistan and the Middle East, including Iraq. In 2007, he joined The New York Times, and reported from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Libya, later moving to New York and London. In 2017 he joined Reuters, working as bureau chief in Jerusalem until Jan. 2022. He then worked in Ukraine and is now based in London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">People of the Web</span> Weekly Yahoo! news feature series about famous internet celebrities

People of the Web was a weekly Yahoo! News feature series that profiled the faces behind the Internet. It reported on World Wide Web content creators, particularly the ones "who are really changing the political, social and religious fabric," according to the show's host, award winning journalist Kevin Sites.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cal Perry</span>

Cal Perry is a broadcast journalist, currently working for MSNBC. He previously worked at Voice of America in a senior role and briefly at Al Jazeera English. Before joining Al Jazeera, he worked for many years with CNN, mostly in the Middle East. During this time, he served as: Bureau Chief in Baghdad, Iraq (2005-2007), Bureau Chief in Beirut, Lebanon. From these bases, he also covered the wars in Lebanon (2006), Georgia (2008) and Pakistan (2008), plus the aftermath of the devastating cyclone in Bangladesh, in 2007.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jim Bittermann</span>

Jim Bittermann is Senior European correspondent for CNN since 1996.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lilia Luciano</span> Puerto Rican journalist

Lilia Luciano is a Puerto Rican journalist, filmmaker, podcaster and public speaker. She is currently a national correspondent and anchor at CBS News based in New York and host of the iHeart Radio podcast, El Flow. Before CBS News she worked as the investigative reporter at ABC 10 in Sacramento and was the chief investigative correspondent on Discovery Channel's Border Live. Her coverage of the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas earned her and her CBS News team an Emmy Nomination for Outstanding Breaking News Coverage in 2023.

Thomas Eugene Costello is an American journalist and correspondent for NBC News, based in Washington, D.C. His reports appear across NBC News platforms, including online, The Today Show, NBC Nightly News, MSNBC, and CNBC. His portfolio of coverage includes aviation and transportation, NASA, consumer and regulatory issues, business, and economics. He also serves as a substitute anchor on NBC News Now, the network's streaming platform.

Tara Sutton is a Canadian journalist and filmmaker whose work in conflict zones has received many awards. She was one of the first international television correspondents to both produce and shoot their own reports and is a pioneer in the field of "video journalism".

Thomas Edward Llamas is an American journalist who was the weekend anchor for World News Tonight on ABC from 2014 to 2021. He left ABC News for rival NBC News, with his last ABC broadcast being on January 31, 2021. On May 3, 2021, he officially joined NBC as Senior National Correspondent and anchor for NBC News Now, hosting Top Story with Tom Llamas, as well as being a fill-in & substitute anchor for Today, and NBC Nightly News, He has won multiple Emmy Awards for his reporting, as well as two Edward R. Murrow awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Holly Williams (journalist)</span> Australian journalist

Holly Williams is an Australian foreign correspondent and war correspondent who has worked for CBS since 2012. Prior to that, she worked for BBC News, CNN, and Sky News.

References

  1. "In Pictures: The Web Celeb 25 - Forbes.com". www.forbes.com. Archived from the original on February 16, 2013. Retrieved February 2, 2022.
  2. "Searching for the ed Murrow of the Backpack Journalist Generation". June 5, 2009.
  3. In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars. Harper Perennial. October 16, 2007.
  4. 1 2 "Meet Kevin Sites". Yahoo News. Archived from the original on December 27, 2008.
  5. 1 2 n:U.S. Navy finds soldier shot wounded Iraqi at Fallujah in self defense
  6. "Manchester College to honor web reporter Kevin Sites". September 23, 2008. Archived from the original on September 20, 2008.
  7. Chris Woodyard (May 10, 2006). "2006 Pearl Winner: Kevin Sites". LA Press Club. Archived from the original on October 11, 2007.

Pemberton, Patrick S. (October 19, 2007). "Journalist and former Pismo resident Kevin Sites in SLO to promote book about life in war zones". San Luis Obispo Tribune. McClatchy Company. Archived from the original on October 21, 2007.