Earlier today, my business partner Mike Sigal and I had a robust discussion about Carla’s post on the Sarah Lacy kerfuffle at SXSW on Sunday. Neither defending nor attacking Lacy, Mike asked whether The Guidewire did a service to the community by entering the debate. “How,” he asked, “are we additive to the debate?”
It’s a fair question and I do think Carla made a key point:
It seems that the audience was misread at several junctures. In the end though, the only question that needs to be answered is whether Lacy did her job as a reporter and interviewer.
Whether you like or dislike Lacy’s style, whether you appreciate her body of work, whether you were in the room or not, one thing has become clear: Lacy became the story.
In fact, I’ve been hard pressed to find much coverage at all of comments made by Mark Zuckerberg during the hour-long keynote Q&A, so I went to YouTube to find video of the interview. Lacy talked about her visit to facebook, her previous discussions with Zuckerberg, her forthcoming book, her interview techniques, her indignation. . . herself.
In short, Lacy made the interview as much about her as it was about Zuckerberg. That, my friends, is an amateur mistake that a journalist of her position should not make.
But, oddly, it’s almost understandable. Read the rest of this entry »
