SXSW | Hoipolloireport

“This is the wrong image, folks.”

Josh Bernoff, of Forrester, complaining (“People are not bees”) about the gross misuse of the bee image among advocates of social activity

“Each of Spitzer’s words was accompanied by a rush of camera clicks.”

Report on the resignation over a prostitution scandal, of New York governor, Elliot Spitzer.

“Airborne is basically an overpriced, run-of-the-mill vitamin pill that’s been cleverly, but deceptively, marketed.”

David Schardt, Center for Science in the Public Interest on Airborne’s $ 23.5 million settlement with the FTC for false advertising.

“The usual way for a newspaper writer to weasel out of such a request is to say that it is not a “local” issue.”

E. J. Montini, in The Arizona Republic, on a reader asking him to display the nine zeros in $12,000,000,000 (when referencing the amount the US spends on two wars each month) and why he complied.

“Try doing what I do for a living … It’s not that easy.”

Journalist Sarah Lacy, in an all downhill interview with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at South By Southwest convention in Austin, Texas. The audience started heckling her, some started dancing.

“I now see myself as The Curator of Conversations.”

Businessweek writer Bruce Nussbaum, commenting on how his approach to journalism has changed. He was commenting on the Sarah Lacy incident.

Saturday’s unfortunate interview at the South By Southwest Interactive technology summit in Austin, Texas may go down as one of the most Twittered incidents. But it will also be remembered as one of the dumbest ways to interview a rock star CEO.

Sarah Lacy seems to have done her homework on the interviewee, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, but didn’t get a good reading of the audience. Going by several reports, she:

Inserted herself into the story
Annoyed the interviewee
Annoyed the audience
Seemed uncertain of her facts
Alluded to the wisdom of the crowds (Digg) as “mob rule”
Exceeded her time

All this from someone who fully understands what the Web 2.0 is all about. (Her book on silicon Valley and the rise of Web 2.0 will be out shortly.)

Bruce Nussbaum of Businessweek summed up the incident well -pointing out to Lacy making the fatal error of “playing an old, traditional, mainstream journalist role” when talking to someone in an entirely new media space. Maybe this interview technique would have worked with a Steve Ballmer, but definitely not with Mr. Facebook.

To be fair, Lacy’s interview with Digg founders later on was totally different. But there was no audience to heckle her –she did the interview strolling along downtown Austin.