There is a lesson the ABC can learn from Joe Rogan, but it’s not what everyone is saying.

Two Wednesdays ago, the new ABC chair Kim Williams went into the ring with the American podcaster, answering a National Press Club question with observations about Rogan’s type preying on anxiety and spreading misinformation while “treating the public as plunder for entrepreneurs that are really quite malevolent”.

Rogan replied with a couple of dismissive acronyms, Williams responded and we had a wordy version of Mike Tyson versus YouTuber Jake Paul. The manosphere, having swamped Williams in sewage, declared Rogan a knockout winner. Can’t argue with 14.5 million subscribers.

Illustration: Simon LetchCredit:

After the bout, the orthodox analysis was that the ABC should be learning from The Joe Rogan Experience. It should try harder to “engage with” the young audiences who are deserting mainstream media. It should seek “relevance”. On the ABC itself, American online culture journalist Taylor Lorenz reproved media “institutions” and “ivory towers”. Audiences, she said, “really want personality-driven media, they want to see who is making their news”.

Elon Musk likened the government-owned ABC to Pravda, though it’s hard to remember Pravda broadcasting such self-criticism.

Problem is, the advice is out of date. For a decade, the ABC has been on a forlorn quest for digital relevance. It has strained to “engage with” pretty much everyone, and done it badly enough to lose its mind.

When Michelle Guthrie became managing director in 2015, ABC iView tilted to data-gathering, signing you up to identify your habits and deepen you into a rut of........

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