If you haven't heard yet about the Sarah Lacy interview-flop with Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg at South By Southwest Conference this weekend in Austin, here's the story, and here's a video of the event from Tech Crunch. I'll warn you, some of the user comments around the video are crude, to say the least.
In a nutshell, though, she flopped.
But I think the audience's eventual mutiny and apparent take-over of the Q&A portion of the event was the most interesting part. How often does an audience feel empowered enough (and capable enough through silent electronic communication - twitter and chat) to obviate its host?
At the risk of over-estimating the significance of the event, I think Sarah Lacy's angry retort of the audience's grumblings, "Let's go with the Digg model and let them have mob rule," is a telling indicator of the status of journalism today.
Why is a single generalist (or even tech/web-focused) journalist better suited to generating and asking questions than an informed and diverse crowd? Isn't the collective wisdom of the group, when appropriately channeled (as Lacey should have done) just as valuable as the professional curation of the moderator?
There's a reason I get my news online today - many sources, many mediums and many experts.
I don't need Dan Rather or Katie Couric to tell me what the news is over a 30 min, ad-interrupted show.
I'll skim my news feeds for the day's headlines, my favorite tech blogs for the latest buzz in Silicon Valley, and the comments section of an iTunes or iMeem page to figure out what an artist sounds like before I listen to the whole album. Sure there are places where anonymity allows posters/publishers to mis-behave, for example, the comments section of the video above. But a good community can police itself, Wikipedia and Meebo are shining examples.
From many to many. The dis-intermediation of the moderator is here to stay.
Comments