It was such a Sun Valley moment.

Microsoft’s Bill Gates walks out of the Thursday morning session of the annual Allen and Co. confab at the Sun Valley Lodge with Google CEO Eric Schmidt on his tail. Gates tells the media “no comment” when they ask about Google’s new Chrome operating system.

“It would be better if you don’t make that comment,” Schmidt said laughing according to the Wall Street Journal’s Julie Angwin .

Such scenes masquerade as news at the business moguls’ paid vacation in Idaho sponsored annually by investment banker Herbert Allen. It is one of the largest gathering of powerful people and the press in the state yet few of us local media attend.

We don’t go very often because we have learned over 27 years there isn’t a lot of news created that is important to our readers. That doesn’t mean deals aren’t going down.

But the deals usually don’t get announced until long after the rich and famous go home.

When there is news we usually get time to catch up. When Katherine Graham died after a fall at the resort in 2001 she was flown to Boise and we carefully covered the story.

Idaho governors often attend the event but they have laid low in the past, following the welcoming spirit of Sun Valley to give the business, government and entertainment leaders space. Despite the concentration of wealth converged on Ketchum, the Idaho Department of Commerce’s Bibiana Nertney has no record of Idaho ever getting a new business that can be traced back to the Allen and Co. week.

But Nertney has been engaging with the national reporters who follow the Allen and Co. camp, seeking to get them interested in Idaho stories they may come back for. Only a Bronco bowl game gives the state more coverage annually.

There is the occasional native born Idahoan vice presidential candidate who decides to suddenly quit her job as Alaska governor. There was Larry Craig.

But this week the big news is that Twitter CEO Evan Williams left the Sun Valley bar after midnight with Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos.

Even the fire that threatened to burn through Ketchum in 2007 didn’t bring as many national reporters to Idaho. Only Herbert Allen’s generous junket can put Idaho on Fox News as the backdrop for an interview with its owner Rupert Murdoch from Sun Valley.

For most Idahoans the week-long series of stories in newspapers and on television is a confirmation that the Wood River Valley is different than their Idaho. But ever since Averill Harriman built the lush report in 1936 and marketed it by bringing people like Gary Cooper and Ernest Hemingway to play here, Sun Valley has become as Idaho as the potato.

Whether you like it or not the Allen and Co soiree has become Idaho too and we might as well bask in its limelight, even if no news is committed.