(...) Kucera s tÃm má svou zkuÅ¡enost. Z kurdského města Erbil posÃlá reportáže časopisu Time. Materiály, které mu přiÅ¡ly nepoužitelné pro účely zaměstnavatele, pak umisťoval na svůj blog. Krátce po začátku války vÅ¡ak dostal přÃkaz, aby tuto činnost zastavil. Stejný osud potkal i Kevina Sitese ze CNN, jehož vedenà televize upozornilo, že "práce pro CNN je pracà na plný úvazek". Oba novináři uposlechli a své stránky nechali ležet ladem.
]]>PISMO BEACH - A Pismo Beach man, covering the war in Iraq for CNN, is now safe after he was held captive Friday. Armed Iraqi forces believed he was an American spy.
Iraqi soldiers fired an AK-47 round at Kevin Sites' feet and tied him up for four hours as he negotiated his release through a translator. Sites and his three-man crew were harassed and stripped of their broadcast gear before they were let go outside Tikrit in northern Iraq. The Iraqis kicked two crew members in the head, but Sites was not injured.
"There were times we truly thought we were going to die," Sites said on CNN hours after his ordeal. "... But it was a roller coaster ride. There were times when they really said they were going to kill us and then the times they said they were going to set us free. It kept on going back and forth for about four hours. And that was the most frightening aspect of it -- the uncertainty of the whole thing."
]]>Some journalists, notably Kevin Sites of CNN, established blogs, online diaries that are frequently updated.
"Lots of newspapers . . . had their journalists filing blogs, photo collections and journals. Some did audio reports for the Web," said Al Tompkins, a faculty member at the Poynter Institute, a Florida education and analysis center for journalists.
]]>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.
]]>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.'..."
]]>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. (...)
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>"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..."
]]>"One Central Coast man is on the front lines in Iraq, bringing the coverage of Operation Iraqi Freedom to the television screen.
Kevin Sites, who is a CNN correspondent, is one of 500 reporters embedded with coalition troops in the Persian Gulf. Recently, Sites has been in northern Iraq with the Kurds. Here at home his fiancée, Nadine Gentry, has been watching the television, even at work, hoping to catch a glimpse of Sites on air.
Kevin Sites has also reported from Afghanistan as a freelancer. Until recently, Sites had been updating his personal website on the war, but CNN asked him to put that project on hold..."
]]>[rough translation from French] If there is one journalist whose work gets around the world, it is Kevin Sites. Working for CNN, he practises as a solo journalist and feeds his blog daily. All of his experiences as a frontline journalist are chronicled there: the daily difficulties, live telephoned reports, as well as the challenges his blog faces -- including prohibition from American officials.
[view video clip here]]]>Power-worshippers as diverse as David Frum and Warren Kinsella now share their thoughts with Web readers, and few mainstream news operations don't include a Web log somewhere on their site -- in the case of msnbc.com and its affiliated slate.com, that comes to means all blogs, all the time.
This mainstreaming of the Web log caused trouble for CNN's Iraq reporter Kevin Sites, whose much admired personal war blog kevinsites.net was ordered closed (temporarily, he hopes)..."
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