Media Evaluation and Monitoring Quotes

If you can figure out who says what, to whom, how, with what effect, you will have come a long way in understanding how communication work.

-Harold D. Lasswell, the political scientist

10 Golden rules of Media Evaluation

Copied from 'Guide to Media Evaluation'

1. Set your objectives carefully
2. Define your target audiences
3. Identify your key messages
4. It's the content that counts
5. Don't just think about your own coverage
6. Watch for bias
7. Decide what output or report you need
8. Win commitment at Board level
9. Share results with other departments
10. Use the results

I became a Christian

I've been wrestling with the word 'believe' lately, as I am not sure what is believe. I talked to friends, Christian and non-Christian. This afternoon, a friend had a long chat with me. We went through most significant points of the Old Testament and New Testament, discussing how God planned to save people from this world, and why Jesus had to die for my own sins. I remember I was having tears in my eyes when he mentioned our sins were crucified with Christ and God turned his face away for 3 hours. But still, when it comes to believing, I still feel less confident. He showed me some verses in Hebrews, quoting as follows:

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

11:3 By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

I was struck by this, and felt I am a Christian as I have faith in God and Jesus. I couldn't explain more about my feelings, but I felt excitingly positive about my decision.

My friend was very happy about my progress:)

Later I went to a house church, and a friend there comfirmed with her experience that God doesn't expect us to know what we didn't know in the bible, but just expected us where we are. Just having a little faith, not a huge faith, is still what God expects for me, and now I have it.

Thank God for reaching out his hands on me, bringing friends to help me grow in faith. Thank you all for being supportive toward my journey of conversion. Amen.

Where is my way out

I've been thinking a lot about faith lately.

I've been doing bible study every Friday for about 8 months. And somehow I feel it comes to a stage to ask myself, Am I a Christian? The more I wanna talk about it, the less I could say. Pieces of thoughts just come and go in my mind, but I can't find an outlet or some way to sort them out.

It is common to consider someone a Christian if he could answer all yes to the following questions:
Do you believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God?
Do you believe that you are a sinner?
Do you believe he had to die for your sins?
Do you believe he resurrected after 3 days?
Maybe there are more questions or questions in different angles. These are what I've heard most frequently.

I think again and again about these questions. But I don't know how to answer. Truely that they are just simple yes and no questions, but when it comes to 'believe', it's hard to tell. I could say I know the answers have been written in Bible, and I am willing to believe Jesus died for us by his holy will. But did he HAVE to die for my sins? I feel blank. I don't know how to connect myself, or my sins, to his death. And I don't know how the reason he laid down his life for us
is gonna affect my life now.

Pictures of UNICEF

UNICEF is located at 3 UN Plaza, (44th Street, between 1st and 2nd Avenue).

It's NOT in the UN building, but on the opposite side of the 1st Avenue. By the way, I've never been into the UN building yet.

One side of the lobby. J8 is a Junior Summit.

The other side of the lobby, a small exhibition to introduce UNICEF.

We have children from all over the world, well, on the wall. This is just one of them.

This is exactly the UN building, and you can see tourists walking down there.

Things across the river are belonging to Brooklyn.

On my way home, I took some pictures of Grand Central.

How I found an internship at UNICEF

I've been dreaming of becoming a quantitative analyst, as my background in computer science and statistics fits that job well. However, after months of internship searching and interviewing a couple of financial companies, I haven't been offered any position.

Then I found an internship post on the website of Career Education Center at my school, and without hoping I could make it ever, I submitted my resume, as I was dazzled by the name of UN.

After a while, when I received an email saying 'Can we do a telephone interview tomorrow', I don't even remember what this is referred to, as I submitted my resume to dozens of posts to find an internship. But finally I recognized, using my computer engineer's trick, this is from UNICEF. I quickly checked the description and found out this position is for COMMUNICATION intern. How am I gonna prepare for this position?! I have no background in it!

In fact, the interviews, both telephone and in-person one, are not very stressful for me, as I really don't know what I could prepare for this, honestly. All I did is being punctual, honest about what I think about their project and what I plan to do this summer (I even told them I prefer any internship than nothing. How could I compare UNICEF internship with NOTHING, lol.) But fortunately, my interviewer, who is my supervisor now, didn't mind my desperate answer that much, or even didn't mind at all, which I have no means to know.

I am right now composing my report at home, happily. I thought some of you might be interested in how I found an internship at UNICEF, and this is my story.

Unicef intern

I am doing internship at UNICEF this summer, and I will be working at communication division as a statistician.

Currently, my job is to conduct assessment of multiple media tools, including Vocus, LexisNexis, Factiva, etc. Normally these tools will at least one of the following 3 functions:

News Database for monitoring
Meida Database for reaching the right journalist
News Distribution for establishing media impact

I've finished determining which company has which function. The next step I will work on compare a certain function through different solution provider/company.

This is not a quant job I've dreamed of, but there is fair amount of reading, analyzing and writing involved, which provides another kind of exercise for my brain.

RQuantlib

"Quant" is short for quantitative analyst. Those people are supposed to be the "brains behind financial models", and are usually with advanced degrees in disciplines such as physics, mathematics and computer science.

QuantLib is a free and widely used library of financial models written in C++ for quants or those who are interested in quant work. Though QuantLib has been the most popular open source computational tool for quants, it seems too painful for a starter who just learned Black-Scholes formula to get the price of the most common financial instrument, call option, using QuantLib.

RQuantLib connects the well-written QuantLib library to GNU R. With RQuantLib, You do not have to know C++ programming to get an option price anymore. Instead, it’s just one command if you installed RQuantLib. What’s more, you could skip all the overwhelming steps of compiling and avoid the risk of being bogged down by compiling bugs. RQuantLib will help you study many financial models without requiring you as a veteran in C++. Also, in business, this means it could save you the cost of training people or build a fast and accurate computational tool.

I am going to NYC this August

I plan to record my daily life, as this blog is mainly for my friends to see how I live my life in a totally new environment. So I think mostly I'll write about what I've learned and what I see in the city.
As I've been living in the same one, which I am proud of, for almost 25 years . It' s gonna be a huge change in my life to start over in a new place, and gonna be fun as well:-)