The LA Times reports that Yahoo has hired Kevin Sites to produce multimedia content across video, audio and text from troublespots around the world.

Sites, regular readers will recall, blogged from the same part of Iraq as me during the war and went on to cause controversy when he filmed a US Marine shooting a wounded Iraqi in Falluja last year.

One of the constant criticisms I hear from interactive journalists in my organisation is how difficult it is to educate some hacks from radio and TV backgrounds about the changing media landscape of blogs, podcasts, citizen journalism, and user generated content.

Some correspondents still feel their main duty is to produce a package for the main evening news bulletin. They just can't understand why we need to interact more with our audiences because they've never had to do it before.

Yahoo is rapidly gaining ground and market share as a news provider -- and the Kevin Sites project is the clearest sign yet of its growing maturity.

The traditional news providers would do well to look over their shoulders, before young upstarts like Yahoo start breathing down their necks.

Oh, and if any of Yahoo's rivals want to sign me up as a rival to Sites, you know the e-mail address.