Kevin Sites spent a year on assignment with Yahoo! News covering the world's wars as a solo digital media correspondent.

Here's some thoughts from an interview with Online Journalism Review:

Carrying over 60 pounds of equipment, Sites leveraged each medium's unique strengths to tell his stories. Video was for the "inherent drama," the "motion" of the world – capturing verbs like dancing, singing, talking, exploding. Text was for "nuance," the "details that bring a story to life." Still photography was reserved for portraits to create a powerful "connection to someone's face," explained Sites.

Reporting simultaneously in three dimensions is "not a replacement for mainstream media... but an amplification of it," said Sites. By putting a human face on the global conflicts and "stringing those stories together so that when you see them online, perhaps collectively, cumulatively, they provide a greater idea of what's happening in that conflict zone."

Sites views news in new media as not the "last word... but the first word" to pull the reader into the story. "The computer that delivers news is also a tool for you to respond to the information." Under the intimate portraits and videos of ordinary people caught in war, Sites provided links to the chronology of the conflict (BBC country profiles) and to possible solutions (NGOs and political organizations).

The site drew two million viewers a week. Sites' workload was heavy: Spending about ten days in each war zone, he transmitted a 600-1,200-word story, five to 15 photographs, and two to three videos every day.

Here's some info on his new project with Yahoo! News:

After Sites' return from the Hot Zone (and a year off scuba diving to decompress), he and Yahoo continued their foray into original reporting in May 2007, albeit with a dramatic change of subject. "People of the Web" is a series of articles and four to four-and-a-half-minute videos featuring people who use the Internet to "bypass the traditional world."

He profiles people who circumvent traditional approaches to acting (lonelygirl15), music (bands on MySpace), and art (Phil Hansen).

"What I wanted to do was reach into the computer, and pull out that human being," said Sites. He looks for stories that contain a strong Web component, a colorful central character, a compelling visual, and an element of social relevance.