In case you haven't already heard, the keynote talk with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was ruined by an annoying and disrespectful BusinessWeek journalist. The interviewer, besides talking over Zuckerberg and interrupting him all the time, appeared to have no clue whatsoever about the important issues that could have been discussed.
Business Week journalist Sarah Lacy, who took the stage to question Zuckerberg at the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas, managed to quickly bore and then annoy both the audience and the 23-year-old billionaire. Furthermore, after totally ruining the eagerly awaited interview,
she appeared to not understand that she totally bombed.
Besides appearing to go into the interview totally unprepared, which is the first no-no on any journalist's big list of no-nos, Sarah Lacy also displayed lack of respect for both Zuckerberg and the audience. Unfortunately, people started shouting, laughing and booing at Lacy's complete lack of professionalism.
The interview, if one can call it that, has been posted all over the internet both as a transcript and as
streaming video. Its grand finale of the interview came right after one person in the audience, probably angry as hell about Lacy’s behavior, told her to “say something interesting” to which she replied, “you don’t understand how hard my job is.” Well, I tell you what, maybe you have mistaken your career path.
The popular social networking web site announced last Tuesday that starting March 24 Sheryl Sandberg, a veteran Google executive, would become Facebook’s chief operating officer, replacing Owen Van Natta.