PHOTOS & WORDS

Joe Weiss at Multimedia Storytelling has discovered another sterling piece of multimedia journalism, Ben Garvin's Voices.

Garvin's piece combines single images and audio from his subjects &mdash a 17-year-old suffering from anorexia, a young pianist, high school dropouts, a man living with AIDS and several others. After the audio plays, an expanded version of what they said appears as accompanying text.

I have a few quibbles with the piece (I wanted to hear the pianist play, for instance), but they are minor. Garvin is a talented photographer, and a good interviewer. Nice work.

9:45:35 PM    

PAYING TO SEE THE BEEB

Dotjournalism is reporting we overseas surfers may have to pay for access to the BBC website.

The BBC may consider offering paid access to its website for overseas users, according to Ashley Highfield, the BBC's director of new media and technology.

Speaking to media and technology magazine Digital Lifestyles, Mr Highfield said pay-per-view or pay-per-play options might be possible off the back of the BBC's Creative Archive project.

The archive will be an extensive library of BBC radio and TV programmes, available free of charge in the UK for non-commercial use. The first stage of the archive goes live this autumn and will include natural history footage.

"It's something that's up for debate. The licence fee extends just to the UK and therefore it is a completely legitimate framework for us to have pay models outside the UK," said Mr Highfield.

According to the dotjournalism report, the BBC is the world's largest content website and has a global user base of around 30 million.

9:33:49 PM