Davos: Reshaping global economics with, or without big media players

The most senior social networking event on the globe opens Wednesday: The World Economic Forum in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland.

And this year’s theme is, “Shaping the Post Crisis World.” Not surprisingly, News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch is there to rub shoulders with world business chiefs and political leaders such as Chinese premiere Wen Jiabao and Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Then there’s the added advantage of all those financial executives to swap business woes with.

Considering the importance of the event however it’s surprising to see so few media leaders keeping Mr. Murdoch company. The marketing world is fully represented by: Omnicom CEO John Wren, Publicis Groupe’s CEO Maurice Levy, WPP CEO Martin Sorrell and IPG’s CEO Michael Roth along with Davos veteran Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman Public Relations; as is Silicon Valley: Bill Gates, Larry Page, Sergey Brin of Google; John Chambers of Cisco and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook.

Beyond Murdoch, the only media elite on the most recent business leader guest list were: Bloomberg chairman, Peter Grauer; Thomson Reuters CEO Thomas Glocer and Steve Forbes. One can only assume that cost controls are taking a toll on the travel expenses of even the people at the top of media companies.

Guess we’ll have to leave it to Murdoch to grapple with what the Forum’s founder described as “The birth of a new era, a wake-up call to overhaul our institutions, our systems and above all, our way of thinking.”

For those who’d like a taste of what goes on at Davos, both MySpace and YouTube are offering video reports from the event, made by two official correspondents