Monday 25 January 2010

'THE GRAPES OF WRATH' IS A WORK OF JOURNALISM

It is irrelevant that 'Grapes of Wrath' was fictional, it was solely based on journalistic research and articles.

The plight of the Joads that he told in the book was a means of raising awareness of the hardship that families faced during their migration to California.

Although it was clearly an innovative work of journalism, Steinbeck's literary genius was recognised when it won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962.

'The Grapes of Wrath' shows that journalism can sometimes reach a point when it becomes art, (I now know why we are based in the Faculty of Arts!)

The book is one of the first examples of 'campaigns' in journalism that can be seen frequently in today's papers. The most recent high-profile campaign is for the people of Haiti who suffered a devastating earthquake a few weeks ago.

They are often given catch names, such as
'Helping Haiti' in The Sun.

'The Grapes of Wrath' did have its critics. It was believed by many that it was a work of propaganda, but later research found that conditions were in fact worse than those portrayed in the book.

Sunday 24 January 2010

YEAR TWO TUTORIALS

Tutorials: Tuesday 26 January...

CLICK HERE TO SEE YOUR TUTORIAL TIME.

Wednesday 20 January 2010

MY PAGE RANK UPDATE

I have decided to clean up my blog as part of my mission to get this site "on the map" so I have made a separate blog for my music called 'The Trance Hutt!'

Over the last few days I've been moving my posts on all things trance to that site and my Alexa Rank has suffered as a result.

The reason for this decline isn't that it was a bad idea to make this choice, it is just the spiders/bots getting used to this dramatic change I have made to my content and its tags.

Once the spiders see that I have 'purified' my content, I hope that my page and Alexa rank will start going up again, but at a quicker rate than before.

In the meantime, this blog still remains in the top 200,000 in the U.K and user's 'time on site' has risen by 162% to 9.25 minutes on average.

Analyse your site on
Alexa.

Analyse your site on
mypagerank.net.

Monday 18 January 2010

WINOL: NEW JOB ROLES

CLICK HERE to check the new jobs that were assigned today.

WINOL embarks on a new journey with the second years taking over News and Sport from the third years.

Will the 'What's On' guide die? Is it the last of the famous Stu Appleby hand gestures? Will the autocue ever work?...

...All will be revealed!

TWO POINTS DROPPED RATHER THAN ONE POINT GAINED

Millwall 1-1 SAINTS

I HAVE had a bad feeling for a while that Saints will just miss out on the play-offs, Saturday's draw at Millwall intensified it.

Saints broke the deadlock in injury time and were minutes from a vital win at The New Den - only to conceed 30 seconds later.

They may have taken at the New Den having been on the back foot for much of the game.

If Saints held on for the win, it would have put them nine points off the play-offs. Now Pardew's side may be worrying that they may have too much ground to make up, especially as their involvement in the FA Cup and Johnstone's Paint Trophy will make for a hectic fixture schedule.

The scalp of Millwall would have been huge psychologically and acted as a catalyst for their play-off push.

Too many more draws will leave Saints running out of the points needed for that elusive sixth place.

Saturday 16 January 2010

MY PAGE RANK

The traffic ranking site Alexa has raised this site to 189,888th in the U.K. Mypagerank.net also shows it has a Google page rank of 2.

This site is now being viewed for 1.5 minutes longer than 3 months ago...I must be doing something right!

My next aim will be to improve its traffic and page rank.

I will keep track of this site's progress over the next few months.

Monday 11 January 2010

REALISM IN ÉMILE ZOLA'S 'GERMINAL'

Émile Zola made it very clear that one of the main themes of his book was to expose the woes of the French miners faced. This idea of exposure is so vital in the birth of Investigative Journalism - and the reason why Émile Zola is tremendously respected in the industry.

The title, 'Germinal,' gives away so much when it comes to understanding this book. The idea is that the crushing of the miners eventually results in them backlashing and germinating into a new world, thus the oppression is a blessing in disguise.

His realist style in 'Germinal' is not only effective in a literary sense, but in the way it is that much more provocative as a result, making the reader want to do something about this disaster. This is extremely similar to the effect of John Steinbeck's 'Grapes of Wrath.'

Here are some quotes that are typical of 'Germinal'.

"On a pitch-black, starless night, a solitary man was trudging along the main road from Marchiennes to Montsou, ten kilometres of cobblestones running straight as a die across the bare plain between fields of beet." (p. 17)

- One of the best, certainly the most striking of openings I have ever read.
- Immediately picks up on the theme of loneliness, reflected in the high frequency of negative, uninspiring adjectives.

"Nothing left, not a penny, not even a crust; what was he to do now, on the road with nowhere to go and no idea even where to find shelter from the wind?" (p. 19)

- This sentence could be used to talk about anyone who has nothing, regardless of era or walk of life.
- Extremely depressing, thus extremely effective considering Zola's agenda.
- Plays on humans basic needs: food, money, shelter. Universal themes. Reminiscent of 'Grapes of Wrath' with the timeless theme of migration.

"...he picked the child [Estelle] out of her cradle and flung her on to her mother's bed, shouting in a frenzy of rage: 'Here, you take her; I could bash her head in...The brat has got everything bloody thing she wants...and yet she grouses louder than anybody else!'" (p. 32)

- An example of the violent/hostile imagery that courses through the book.
- Deep frustration. Cursing at three month old child.

Sunday 3 January 2010

WHY EVERYBODY LOVES THE FA CUP...

League One Leeds United reignited the magic of the FA Cup in an historic 1-0 win over rivals Manchester United today.

Jermaine Beckford's 19th-minute clincher was the highlight of the third round weekend, which was starved of giantkillings.

Following the League One side's recent demise, watching Leeds and their 9,000 travelling supporters get one over on the Premier League Champions was especially inspirational - and captured the romance of the FA Cup.

Manchester United were last knocked out at the third round stage in 1984 by Bournemouth.

There has been much talk in recent years about the growing gulf in quality of the Premiership over the Championship, let alone League One, but the third tier of English football is arguably stronger than it has been in years.

Despite fielding a weakened side, Manchester United are still hard to beat at Old Trafford - even by top flight sides.

The Whites have earned a trip to Tottenham in the fourth round. Here are all the other fourth round ties:

SAINTS v Ipswich
Reading/Liverpool v Burnley
Millwall/Derby v Brentford/Doncaster
Bristol City/Cardiff v Leicester
Stoke v Arsenal
Notts County/Forest Green v Wigan
Scunthorpe v Man City
West Brom v Plymouth/Newcastle
Everton v Nottm Forest/Birmingham
Accrington/Gillingham v Fulham
Bolton v Sheff Utd/QPR
Portsmouth/Coventry v Sunderland
Preston v Chelsea
Aston Villa v Brighton
Wolves v Crystal Palace
Tottenham v Leeds


Ties to be played 23 January