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April 10, 2003
Reuters
CNN cameraman Kevin Sites, on assignment in Iraq, was asked by his employer to cease updating his blog site http://www.kevinsites.net for the time being to avoid potential reporting conflicts. BBC producer Stuart Hughes' blog http://stuarthughes.blogspot.com/, went quiet for four days last week while he recuperated from a land mine injury in Northern Iraq.
Posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:40 PM
April 07, 2003
Santa Cruz Sentinel
While war blogs may be changing the shape of journalism, not all embrace the BBCs approach. Most American news networks so far have taken a hands-off approach to their correspondents free lancing online. CNN did ask one of its reporters, Kevin Sites, to stop running his blog despite his disclaimer on his site.
'Some reporters really enjoy doing them in addition to routine reporting," said Steve Outing, senior editor at the Poynter Institute, a journalism school and resource center in St. Petersburg, Fla. "It’s a great way to get a more personal perspective of what life is like over there.'..."
Posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:07 AM
April 04, 2003
San Luis Obispo New Times
War blogs from Iraq:
Former New Times correspondent shows the personal side of war in Iraq
The war on Iraq is the Internet’s first big war. And Pismo Beach war correspondent Kevin Sites is at the center of an Internet controversy that news networks have never had to deal with before. Sites, 40, a former New Times correspondent during the Afghanstan invasion and Cal Poly lecturer, is a CNN correspondent stationed in Chamchamal, northern Iraq.
He had been posting journal entries and weblogging (commonly called blogging) on his web site, www.kevinsites.net, while reporting for CNN. Shortly after the war started, CNN asked Sites to stop posting his diary on the Internet.
"Covering for CNN is a full-time job and we ask him to concentrate on that only," said Edna Johnson, CNN publicist.
Some of Sites’ loyal web visitors and fellow bloggers were upset that CNN would take away this valuable source of information. Many of the bloggers are news junkies who can’t wait for news broadcasts after work. They check into web sources like Sites’ for minute-by-minute information on the war.
The difference between Sites’ web page and other up-to-the-minute news sources is that his is personal. For many readers Sites’ journal entries are like getting a letter from a brother or boyfriend soldier, but for those who don’t have loved ones in Iraq, they can log on to Sites’ web page from anywhere in the world and feel the same intimacy. (...)
Posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:17 PM
April 03, 2003
Dave Winer's Scripting News
Posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:56 PM
Online Journalism Review
To blog or not to blog? The controversy has helped blogs jump up on the public’s radar screen, but it has also divided the working press into separate and distinct camps.
Posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:12 PM
Blogosphere.us
Kevin Sites announced last week that his bosses at CNN asked him to suspend writing on his weblog while he covers the war for them. Kevin's blog had been receiving roughly 70 - 80 new links per day while he was able to maintain it.
Posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:38 AM
The American Observer
War reporters: Pioneers in 'Blog' Cabins
WASHINGTON - It’s Tuesday, March 18 at 3:45 a.m. Reporter Kevin Sites is in Kalar, Iraq, watching hordes of Kurds stuffing themselves into already swollen trucks bound north, away from the front lines of war.
Sites, a CNN reporter, is outfitted with portable, digital technology that allows him to report, edit and transmit his stories immediately. He is on his way into the eye of the soon-to-be storm. But first, he stops to post his observations on his Weblog (www.kevinsites.net) - an amalgam of journalistic dispatches and diary entries, updated regularly with the most recent entry first.
Posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:36 AM
April 01, 2003
San Luis Obispo Tribune
TV Viewers have Sites set on Pismo reporter
"TV, TV, on the wall, who's the fairest war reporter of them all? NBC's David Bloom? Try again. NBC's Arthur Kent? Nope. The "Scud Stud" reigned in the last Gulf War. The answer is Pismo Beach's very own Kevin Sites, if you talk to his female fans.
As CNN's Sites reports from Chamchamal in northern Iraq, he's been inspiring shock and awe among some viewers. That includes scores of women who have e-mailed him love letters and posted friendly messages on a bulletin board linked to his personal Web site, www.kevinsites.net..."
Posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:20 PM