Although a mere 34% of bloggers define themselves as journalists, the bulk of them, actually 56%, sometimes or often double-check their sources (source: Pew Internet & American Life Project, 20th July 2006 report).

I believe 100% of journalists call themselves journalists. But how many exactly double-check their sources? How many ‘professional’ journalists cross information drilled through different channels before publishing/displaying/broadcasting it?

Believe me or not, the answer is “very few”. Through a non-profit venture I worked for during 4 years, I had the opportunity to meet many, many journalists, one different everyday at some point, from many countries

Some journalists are sincerely curious, smart, honest, accountable, reliable, trustworthy, professional & helpful when it comes to helping readers getting to know what happened where. Unfortunately, such good journalists are a minority. I’m writing ‘good’ the same way I would qualify someone as ‘a good person’, in a narrow sense: I’m not talking about their skills, I’m not saying they’re good rather than excellent, because these good people are just doing their real job, as it should be done.

Indeed, too many journalists forget about their initial mission statement: provide THE MOST ACCURATE FACTS to readers, rather than viewpoints or political messages. Instead of that, journalists are urged by their editors or their paper’s owners to convey specific political messages. Reading one single newspaper hardly helps getting a clear picture of what’s really going on since every single one of them expresses a viewpoint. The solution for us, citizens, would be to read all sorts of papers (different doctrines, countries, etc.) to confront representative opinions – which is hardly feasible for someone who can´t spend more than an hour a day reading the news.

Furthermore, many of the journalists I talked to confessed that, being conscious of their clout, they sometimes tend to abuse it. And when they do so, what happens? Well, nothing…A reader sends a letter to the editor, and this letter’s most of the time not published, if read at all. However, in most regulated environments, there are consequences to one’s mistakes: Andersen was dismantled in the aftermath of Enron, medical doctors get sued in case they do something wrong, unskilled politicians don’t get reelected (well..I agree there’s room for discussion on this one), thiefs get trialed, murderers get sentenced to jail or Death Penalty, Zidane got a red card..humm, let’s stop piling up examples – you got the idea.

It all boils down to the following conclusion: no check & balances & seldom double-checking of sources (due to lack of time, fast-moving Society, publishing deadline, etc. – journalists just rephrase what Press Agencies broadcast), traditional media are in a pickle. Collateral damage: less and less citizens trust the media.

This is where blogs come in. Blogs, as I see it, constitute a Hegelian overtaking of traditional media routine:

Be inaccurate, just once, and someone will inevitably post a correcting comment.

Don´t mention your source & people will ask for it.

Try to lie on a blog: the blogging community will immediatly retaliate.

Blogs are also a fabulous counter-power for the people. Churchill once said during a House of Commons speech, on November 11th 1947, that “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Thanks to blogging, democracies widen the gap that separates them from autocracies, symbolized by traditional media who have become more powerful than necessary.

I came across a refreshing article in the Economics Focus column of this Friday´s issue of the opinion-shaping, free-market, weekly, British magazine The Economist.

Amar Bidhé, a Professor of entrepreneurship at Columbia University´s business school, explained in a recent paper why mushrooming alarming reports stating that the US economy will suffer from a shortcoming of engineering graduates are mistaken.

Bidhé distinguishes upstream (R&D offsprings, inventions) and downstream (a service or product) innovations, and demonstrates that good managers, able for instance to bring a patent to the market, matter as much if not more than good engineers. Bidhé also advocates the Wal Mart case, striking a positive opinion about a company that has optimized its operational processes (downstream innovation) to lower prices and attract more consumers.

I recommend you to read Bidhé´s paper as well as The Economist´s column, which ends with Amar Bidhé´s main idea: there is no added value without a transaction, and since American consumers often lead the use of innovation products & services, the more innovation in China & India, the better for the United States. Consumers, not technologists, reap off the benefits of innovation. Hence the whole point of the demonstration: “America´s policymakers should worry more about how to keep consumers consuming than about the number of science and engineering graduates, at home or in the East” (source: The Economist).

This week-end I found some time to hang around the Barcelona Logistics Zone, hidden by the hill of Montjuic, at the Southern exit of the city.

I love watching the actual happening of international business. I believe the contemplation of merchandise trade flows helps understanding how the world goes round: a French container departs to Japan, a Chinese one arrives in Spain, etc. By the way, I suggest you combine harbor watch with reading a good Albert Londres novel for a unique, genuine, amazing brainstorming experience. It´s pretty much like making love whilst sipping a Chivas on the rocks.

Globalization has made the Information and Services Society hit the headlines, but though the feeling of distance might be abolished by IT, geography will never be annihilated. Moreover, we more and more tend to talk about what moves all around (capital, humans, goods, services, etc.) but tend to forget about what remains stable: distances. Distances matter more and more in a growing Consumers Society. We consume a hell lot of products, every day more products.

Products trade go through containers, a standardized metal “box” invented in the end of the 60s in Hong Kong. Containers fit the loading infrastructures of boats, airplanes, trains and trucks and are bound to at least use 2 of these transportation means during each trip, often more. Paradoxically enough, containers spend most of their time in storage areas like warehouses. Since containers are devised to make goods move from one place to another in a minimum period of time, one of the big challenges of supply chain management is to reduce storage periods.

This is where IT comes in: reducing storage time will lower working capital, and better the transaction economics. In this respect, IT can help.

78% of the logistics industry players make less than half a million dollars a year (source: International Data Corporation). Hence an overall limited of resources available for IT investments, which explains why, apart from MNCs who for a decade have been investing heavily to foster a competitive advantage. Trucking corporations have been particularly late in adopting Information Technology.

So far, it´s been proven (source: Ibid.) that the use of Internet & collaboration tools lowers transportation costs by 20% to 30%. Such achievements were reached thanks to:

- a better accountability of supply chain flows;

- inventory data sharing between manufacturers, transporters and retailers.

See for yourself, the best logistics companies are no more in the logistics business but in the information business. This is due to the very shift of the industry, enhanced by the generalization of EDI systems (Electronic Data Interchange) and soon-to-come (?) generalization of RFID.

I was always amazed by the FedEx tracking feature, allowing end-users to know exactly where a shipment is. I think information about one´s flows help accepting natural shipping delays due to geographical distances, never to be abolished. Let´s however make sure financial analysts don´t start analyzing logistics player stocks like media company ones…