Davos then and now

At the risk of harking back to old days, I recall a late 1980s Davos meeting, when I was the only person from Reuters on the mountain. The forum was gathering steam by then, and having filed about 35,000 words in three days I printed out a copy of all the stories and pleaded with World Economic Forum media staff to let us have another - just one other - accredited correspondent. Politely, they refused. The next year, with the Greek and Turkish prime ministers shaking hands and a full-blown OPEC ministerial conference on the fringe, we mustered a team of several people, but I was still the only accredited person with access to the venues. That was the end of Davos as a discreet gathering of the near-famous and used-to-be famous and the start of the jamboree. The Reuters family photo from this year [Reuters fields huge team for Davos meeting] is a testament to the hype and hysteria the event has developed, and the need of politicos and intelligentsia to be seen to be doing something, or at least to be seen. ■