There’s a brouhaha brewing on the left coast over a keynote Q&A conducted by BusinessWeek reporter Sarah Lacy. The thoughts, plans and opinions of her subject, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, was of great interest to the attendees of the South by Southwest Interactive Festival held in Austin, Texas, this week. But, as Wired reports:
They came expecting a civilized, one-on-one discussion, but they got what some attendees described as “a train wreck.”
What happened?
Using her unique, friendly style of interviewing — closer to two friends chatting than a straight question-and-answer session — Lacy tried to get the notoriously tight-lipped Zuckerberg to open up. But the discussion rarely strayed beyond the usual business fare and eventually descended into a string of awkward moments punctuated by the audience’s heckling.
Nick Page of AdAge.com is more detailed:
Early in the interview when Mr. Zuckerberg started talking about Facebook’s Spanish-language expansion, Ms. Lacy interrupted to talk about her enthusiasm for Spain; when Mr. Zuckerberg got the floor back he explained that the expansion was more about his site’s popularity in Colombia. At another point she told a story about a previous interview she had done with the 23-year-old billionaire at Facebook’s office, relating that when the session had ended, Mr. Zuckerberg was drenched in sweat, and that he had a prevalent facial tick “like a little bird.”
Let me say that I have conducted some terrible interviews in my 15 years as a paid reporter. The worst: in 2001, when the legendary and legendarily press-shy animator Hayao Miyazaki stalked off during a hard-won face-to-face, proclaiming my questions stupid and dull. He was right; they were. Having stayed up all night crying and watching the TV was nothing I could bring up as an excuse; the events of Sept. 11 apparently had not had the same effect on him. (He returned after a smoke, cheerful as day.)
My humiliation was semi-private. Though witnessed by his entourage, the anime-loving public didn’t weigh in on my meandering questions and long, panicked pauses. No more. Even us dorky print reporters must succumb to the reality that our work in progress is now often podcasted, YouTubed and blogged.
I feel for Sarah Lacy, whom I don’t know. Ten, even five years ago, a spacey keynote would have remained the chitterchatter of the few hundred attendees. What do you think: should reporters’ technique be criticized by the masses, or is it the result that matters?