Kevin Sites

Kevin Sites (MSJ89) was inducted into the Medill Hall of Achievement in 2008.

As one of the world’s most respected war correspondents, Sites (MSJ89) spent years covering global war and disaster for several national networks. Sites helped pioneer solo journalism, working completely alone, traveling and reporting without a crew. He carries a backpack of portable digital technology to shoot, write, edit and transmit multimedia reports from around the world.

Now, Sites is taking his first-hand reporting experience into the classroom as a faculty member at the University of Hong Kong, where he teaches video storytelling.

As Yahoo!’s first news correspondent, Sites covered every major conflict in the world in 2005 and 2006. “Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone” reported stories that often were under-covered or overlooked by mainstream media for Yahoo!’s global audience of 400 million users. In response, the Los Angeles Press Club awarded Sites the esteemed 2006 Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism and Forbes Magazine listed him as one of 2007’s Web Celeb 25, “the biggest, brightest and most influential people on the web today.” Hot Zone’s site was designated by Time Magazine as one of 2006’s 50 Coolest Websites on the Internet.

Sites has written three books, all about war. His first book, "In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars," shares intimate accounts of his journeys throughout 2005 and 2006, ultimately revealing war’s human face and cost.”. He’s also the author of “Swimming with Warlords: A Twelve Year Journey Across the Afghan War”, and “The Things They Cannot Say: Stories Soldiers Won’t Tell You About What They’ve Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War.”

Sites' career spans cable (CNN) and network news (ABC and NBC) as well as print journalism. As a producer for NBC News, he received an Edward R. Murrow Award for coverage of the Kosovo war and was nominated for a national Emmy Award for contributions to a series on landmines. He has produced shows such as NBC’s "Nightly News with Tom Brokaw" and ABC's "This Week with David Brinkley."

In 2010, Sites was chosen as a Nieman Journalism Fellow at Harvard University and in 2012, he was selected as an Ochberg Fellow in Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University.