Journalism belongs on stage

The tech/startup conference season is upon us once again, and I'm busy finalising my plans and commitments. And while I'm at that, I wanted to talk about an important aspect of journalists moderating panels or on-stage interviews at events.

After scores if not hundreds of stage appearances at tech conference, something happened to me for the first time this year that I keep thinking about. An event organisation invited me to interview a reasonably high-profile founder and CEO on stage — only for the invitation to be withdrawn after I had a preliminary chat with a comms person.

I never got a chance to follow up with that company representative directly, but according to the organisation, they had experienced our conversation as “hostile,” and hence asked for someone else to moderate the on-stage interview.

Now, I wouldn't say I was hostile in that call — but I was certainly more skeptical than your usual non-journalist panel moderator. The company in question has had a number of rather public PR blunders over the years, and the on-stage interview topic certainly called for revisiting some of them — which is exactly what I did. The rationale behind that was actually to make sure the comms person is aware of what can be expected in the interview, and to avoid it feeling like an ambush.

So much for my good intentions. I'm not holding a grudge against any party in this case — but the situation did highlight an apparent expectation mismatch:

1. Executives speaking at industry events in Europe have grown to expect warm baths on stage, with questions around the “lessons learned” and “best practices.”
2. Event organisers, following the path of least resistance, share this expectation. This is less true for events organised by media companies — but, unfortunately, there are very few of those left in the tech space in Europe.
3. Journalists, on the other hand, often follow their instincts in trying to shape up a story that's interesting, important, and engaging for the audience. This pursuit often leads to asking uncomfortable questions — as happened in my case.

So, my rhetorical question to the comms/PR crowd is, why would you treat an on-stage interview with a journalist at a conference differently than any other journalistic interview, with or without an audience? And more broadly, how did it happen that event interviews are now mainly seen as a way to deliver PR-approved bullet points rather than have an authentic conversation?

Granted, not every on-stage interview has to be hard hitting and dramatic, and the “lessons learned” and “best practices” may be interesting — but for the audience's sake, I think we should normalise the idea of “journalism on stage” at conferences.

When I sit down and talk to someone in front of an audience, I don't really do it much differently than I would in my normal journalistic practice (or in a podcast recording for that matter). And I think it's a good thing for the people watching — also because they can see the kind of work that goes into stories they consume in the media.

I'm happy to hear opinions on this from all sides — do send a message to andrii@unzip.media or use LinkedIn comments. Alternatively, come and say hi in person at TechBBQ in Copenhagen or the EIC Scaling Club's Ambition Forum in Riga in the coming weeks.

Until next time,
Andrii.

Recent videos to watch

Since the previous edition of the newsletter, I've finished and published a few videos I'd love to share with you — check them out, and subscribe to our YouTube channel to stay up to date:

The Unpack: Inside the flame war around the “28th regime” for European startups. I talked to MEP René Repasi and Maximilian Henning, a tech reporter at Euractiv, to make sense of the current situation around the EU Inc. proposal.

SiPearl: €130 million for European HPC processors designed in France. An interview with Philippe Notton, founder and CEO of Europe's only company designing CPUs for supercomputers.

Bindi Karia (Molten, ex-SVB): “Let's not write Europe off yet”. An interview with Bindi Karia, whose career path includes Microsoft, Silicon Valley Bank, and the VC firm Molten Ventures among any others. Working on the intersection between corporates, governments, startups, and policy makers, Bindi offers a unique perspective on the European tech ecosystem.