Los Angeles Press Club to Honor War Correspondent Kevin Sites at 2006 Southern California Journalism Awards

Los Angeles Press Club to Honor War Correspondent Kevin Sites at 2006 Southern California Journalism Awards

Yahoo!'s First News Correspondent to Receive 5th Annual Daniel Pearl Award for Courage

HOLLYWOOD, March 7 /PRNewswire/ -- The Los Angeles Press Club has announced that Kevin Sites, war correspondent for Yahoo! News' "Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone", has been chosen to receive the 2006 Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism. The award will be presented at the 48th Annual Southern California Journalism Awards to be held June 24, 2006, at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. Past Pearl Award recipients include the late Michael Kelly of the Atlantic Monthly, TIME Magazine journalists Michael Weisskopf and James Nachtwey, and investigative journalist/editor Jesus Blancornelas.

In recommending Sites for the award, Daniel Pearl's parents, Ruth and Judea, said, "His style of work, the solitary commitment to truth, the selection of the newsworthy, the focus on the human faces, and the human fate -- it all mirrors the works of Danny."

Upon learning he had been selected for the Pearl Award, Sites said, "As a journalist, few things are more gratifying than being recognized by your colleagues. They are the people who live this life, who best understand the sacrifices it requires, who sometimes endure the scorn but also know the rewards of telling stories that mean something. Daniel Pearl lived that life and paid the ultimate sacrifice for it. To be honored in his name will be a constant reminder to work to his standards every day."

As Yahoo! News' first correspondent, Sites' current assignment is to spend one year covering every armed conflict in the world. Traveling alone to the world's hotspots armed with portable digital technology, he shoots, writes and edits his stories for "Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone" ( http://hotzone.yahoo.com/ ), enabling Yahoo!'s (NASDAQ:YHOO) global audience of 400 million Internet users instant access to his reports. Thus far, Sites' "Hot Zone" coverage has emanated from some of the most volatile regions on earth including Somalia, the Congo, Sudan, Iraq, Chechnya and Iran.

Sites has spent the last five years covering wars and disasters for several national networks reporting from danger zones in Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia and Kosovo. In 2003 while covering the initial invasion of Iraq for CNN, he was captured and briefly held by Saddam Hussein's militia. He previously reported from Afghanistan, before and after the fall of the Taliban, and shot some of the earliest video of ground combat there. He has made several trips to Colombia to cover U.S. anti-drug efforts, and he reported from the heart of the devastation in Indonesia following the 2004 tsunami.

Sites has been honored numerous times for his work including the Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism, an Edward R. Murrow Award, and several Emmy nominations. He also recently won Wired Magazine's Rave Award, the first-ever for blogging.

In addition to the Pearl Award, the Southern California Journalism Awards gala will present honors to journalists in a variety of categories for excellence in broadcast, print and online media reporting in 2005. Dave Lopez of CBS 2 News will also be honored during the evening when he is presented with the Joseph M. Quinn Award for lifetime achievement. An announcement naming the President's Award recipient is forthcoming.

For further information, or for tickets, advertising or sponsorship opportunities, contact LAPC Executive Director Diana Ljungaeus at 323-469-8180 or diana@lapressclub.org; or LAPC Publicist Katherine Agard at 310-435-2822 or katherine@lapressclub.org.

Source: Los Angeles Press Club

CONTACT: Jonathan Evans for Los Angeles Press Club, +1-480-282-2097

Web site: http://hotzone.yahoo.com/

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