Yahoo stepped into the ring with network and cable news giants today, announcing that veteran war reporter Kevin Sites will become its first news correspondent. His beat: Every war in the world.

The launch of "Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone" heralds Yahoo's move into original online programming. The company, which for years flourished by recycling content from tradition media, now seems eager to compete for it, having built up operations in Santa Monica, a stone's throw from Hollywood studios and production centers.

The goal of the Hot Zone, which will feature video, audio and text, as well as live chat and videoconferencing from the heart of violent, raging conflicts in some 36 countries around the globe -- what Yahoo calls "important, yet underreported stories" -- is to create an interactive news experience. It will allow users to become "personally invested" in the story, according to Yahoo media group chief Lloyd Braun. He knows of what he speaks. The former chairman of ABC Entertainment, Braun was a driving force in developing the network's signature reality programming. He's now looking at similar initiatives for Yahoo in sports, health and entertainment coverage that embrace the "qualities of the Internet." By that he means allowing viewers greater control over content and delivery.

Neither the idea, nor the technology, is particularly new. So why now? Yahoo, and Braun, may be sincere about bringing a younger, online generation back to nightly news. That and tapping into an emerging online video advertising market. Either way, by leading with daily live warfare, wherever Sites finds it, Yahoo's new user-friendly newscasts may look like nothing more than CNN on overdrive.

That would be shame. Because by converging media, the promise of the Web is in allowing users an interactivity, intimacy and transparency into both news events and the newsgathering process surrounding them. To a degree unimaginable in newspapers and television, Web users can witness events themselves, navigating unfettered through multiple platforms and perspectives.

Depending on how his year-long assignment goes, Sites may prove to be the Twenty-first Century's first reporter. That or simply another scud stud.