The crowd filled the room. Tech fans were ga-ga to hear Zuckerberg talk about the popular online platform. Then the crowd apparently turned on Lacy, upset with the way she was interviewing Zuckerberg. Daniel Terdiman's article at C|Net tells the story:
"Other than rough interviews," an audience member asked Zuckerberg during a short Q&A session at the end of the keynote, "what are some of the biggest challenges Facebook faces?"
"Has this been a rough interview?" Lacy asked Zuckerberg.
"I wasn't asking you, I was asking Mark," the audience member said.
The battle between Lacy and the audience began almost immediately. From the beginning of her interview with Zuckerberg, she repeatedly interrupted him, and all around me, I started to hear annoyed murmurs of people saying that she should stop doing so.
Later on, Zuckerberg himself seemed to get annoyed by Lacy's style. As he was answering one of her questions, she began to talk over him, only to notice his reaction.
"I kind of cut you off," she said. "You kind of had this hurt look, like, 'I was talking.'"
Near me in the third row of the ballroom, someone said, "Is she serious?"
It only got worse from there. At one point, Lacy got confused about how much time was left for the interview, and Zuckerberg teased her.
"Did you run out of questions?" he asked.
The line got a huge cheer from the thousands in the audience.
Lacy's party line afterward was to claim that she and Zuckerberg were on the same side, and wondering why the crowd turned against them. One interviewer pointed out that they didn't turn against "them" so much as they turned against "her." Nonetheless, she was unapologetic, even pulling the gender card and boasting of her increased Amazon ranking. Hardly the humble approach consumers generally appreciate from their journalists.
It's hard to get an accurate read on such a bizarre event, even with all the feeds of interconnectivity that were plugged into the moment---live-blogging, texting, Twitters, etc.---but a few things seem certain. First, mob rule is insatiable, particularly among a crowd as overly caffeinated and supercharged as the tech crowd. Second, be careful when and where you play minority/disadvantaged cards or boast of your own profile and accomplishments. Especially when a reporter is videorecording you.
Most important, however, is a basic journalistic tenet: Don't be the story. Consumers don't read even the most beloved and uniquely voiced columnists for the way they say things---it's always the what that consumers are after. The way is always a value-add; it's never the substance.
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