Biz journalists descend on Davos

Yvette Kantrow, executive editor of The Deal, wants to know why so many business journalists are at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland when a number of CEOs have bailed on the event.

Kantrow writes, “The New York Times Co. — which is so cash-strapped it’s paying 14% for its latest financing and is seeking to sell its gleaming new headquarters — has sent seven (seven!) journalists to the conference, including DealBook’s Andrew Ross Sorkin, business columnist Floyd Norris and a contingent from the International Herald Tribune.

“The Times isn’t alone of course. The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, BusinessWeek, Time, CNBC, BBC, to name but a few, are all reporting and blogging from Davos, with lots of posts about the general mood, weather and our favorite, personal random observations and impressions. ‘Anxious readers will want to know that my bags finally arrived,’ Time magazine’s Michael Elliott, the editor of Time International, noted in one of his posts from the meeting. I’m so relieved.

“To be sure, if someone offered me an expense account to fly off to Switzerland in search of Vladimir Putin, Wen Jiabo, George Soros and scores of other luminaries who are allegedly meeting to solve the world’s problems, I’d pull on my snow boots faster than you can say boondoggle.

“And it’s not like the journos who are there aren’t reporting on the conference’s substance; they are filing many dispatches on the various sessions and official proceedings, bringing us almost every word uttered in public by the so-called Davos men. But Webcasts — not to mention summaries and blogs — of those same sessions can also be found on the World Economic Forum’s own Web site.”

Read more here.