Yahoo
continues to defy everyone, hiring Kevin Sites as its first correspondent.
Couldn’t have picked someone better, since Sites, a reporter (for
CNN and MSNBC) and blogger has covered the war, and continues to defy what war reporting
is all about. Radar magazine described him as a ‘heat seeking journalist’ (he covered
the Iraq war, Afghanistan, and the tsunami) since
he is known for the controversy after shooting the Mosque shooting.
See interview here. Sites’ observations the implications for the media are worth pondering.
“like most people
these days who are under 70, I don’t have time to sit down and watch the
nightly news. And I used to work for them. So most of my news searching comes
from the internet. I will look at blogs, I’ll look at irregular sources, but
also at a lot of the mainstream sites.”
His War Diaries, maintained as a blog, are some of the best reporting you’ll find. Take this observation, from Afghanistan.
This is how it works. There are two wires. They are insulated wires. But still. They are jammed into the socket openings in the wall. Follow the wires. They wrap a couple of times around a steel bed frame, across the floor and finally, thread the grooves carved into a brick, sitting on other bricks in the middle of the room. The wired brick is glowing.
On this chill night in December, this is where the orphans warm their hands–huddled around this glowing brick.
They are not sad or whining or feeling sorry for themselves. They are laughing, campfire faces, flushed in red–happy for this one thing, this small warm thing.
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