Yahoo! News has hired a veteran war correspondent to report on each of the world’s armed conflicts for a website called "Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone". The journalist will spend a year visiting 35 countries listed as war zones by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, recording his experiences with digital cameras and updating the website with regular video, audio and text reports.

Mr Sites, who has worked for CNN and NBC, provoked controversy in November last year when he released footage showing a US Marine shooting an unarmed Iraqi in a mosque in Fallujah.

On this assignment, Mr Sites will travel alone, employing local translators in each destination, his only constant companion being a rucksack full of high-tech communications equipment.

As well as three mobile phones, a laptop and a satellite modem, which will provide internet access from even the remotest of trouble spots, he will carry four digital cameras: one for photographs, one for video, one that's waterproof and one mounted on a headband like a miner’s lamp. Power will come from a solar generator.

"It’s an incredible opportunity to help develop the next step in the evolution of journalism and to tell a different set of stories more completely," Mr Sites said. "We are going to put a human face on every story we cover. Our reporting will be story-driven, like any compelling tale."

Yahoo! said in a statement that Mr Sites would seek out stories not usually covered by the mainstream media and would avoid the temptations of "pack journalism", in which groups of reporters descend on a hotspot, only to move on to the next incident after a few days.

A company spokesman, David Sawday, said that the project reflected Yahoo!’s commitment to expanding its news coverage, which consists mainly of links to stories on sites run by newspapers, broadcasters and news agencies. This is the first time that the company has directly employed a journalist.

"We’re very focused on delivering the best media content," Mr Sawday said. "One of the things that the web is increasingly able to do is to offer the combination of video and audio and text, and we view that as one of its strengths.

"Conflict reporting is central to a balanced, mature news offering," he added.

The project marks another stage in the rise of the weblog as a supplement to serious journalism. Not long ago, the blog was the reserve of geeks and conspiracy theorists, but established news sites now offer an increasing range of weblogs and reader forums, increasing the immediacy and interactivity of their journalism.

"The power relationship between print and online is tilting towards the internet," wrote Dan Sabbagh, The Times’s media commentator, in a recent article. "Simple-to-use news filters, such as the Bloglines service, have made it easier to monitor and search for news and comment, putting personal blogs and small websites on a par with the BBC and The New York Times as information sources."

Times Recommends

• Minister in talks with Saudis to protect creditors
• Premier Inn hits back in £29-a-room row
• Bankers hit back at 'populist' bonus supertax