Guthrie was an outsider who ‘rarely watched the news’

It was the ultimate culture clash. Michelle Guthrie, a lawyer fresh from Google meets the custodians of earnest ABC journalism. No wonder it went pear-shaped.

Michelle Guthrie never watched the news.

It was the ultimate culture clash. Michelle Guthrie, a lawyer straight out of the shiny digital behemoth of Google meets the proud custodians of earnest legacy journalism at the ABC.

ABC insiders say right from the start, Ms Guthrie made it clear her very favourite TV program was popular reality show Gogglebox. News and current affairs programs, core business for the ABC, came a very distant second.

Her apparent refusal to understand that the ABC’s main product was news, not lifestyle programs or a “po-faced version” of the commercial networks, dogged her ­entire tenure.

“She kept telling us all the time her favourite program was Gogglebox, and why couldn’t we have more cheap shows like that?” says one former ABC executive producer. “She rarely watched the news. This was the woman who was head of the public broadcaster for f..k’s sake.”

Ms Guthrie was initially trumpeted as a senior management executive at Google who brought the kind of visionary digital expertise needed for the ABC to remain relevant to a younger audience.

ABC journalists told The Australian it quickly became apparent her digital expertise was at best superficial, her lack of understanding of basic journalism was ­“astounding”, and she appeared completely unprepared to step up to the challenge of managing a public broadcaster.

“There was total bewilderment over at Google when Guthrie got the job,” one ABC insider said.

“She had gone to Google with a good-looking CV, too, but apparently she was such a disappointment there as well that she had been sidelined on special projects in Singapore with just a handful of direct reports.

“She wasn’t in a senior role.”

GRAPHIC: The rise and fall of Michelle Guthrie

Six months after her appointment, Ms Guthrie joined in an ABC Four Corners meeting in late 2016.

Asked what she would like to see more of on the flagship program, Ms Guthrie suggested “more positive profiles on successful business leaders”.

She then shared her thoughts on a recent program on the desperate plight of children on Nauru.

“She said we should have included ‘happy children’ in the story,’’ a veteran reporter recalled.

“There was a really long pause until one reporter said, ‘Um, there are no happy children on Nauru.’

“It was scary.”

Over more than two years of Ms Guthrie’s “corporate Google cult-style” management and a ­series of savage redundancies, general exasperation would give way to a full staff revolt in newsrooms across the country.

“She told us her mission was for the ABC to be the most viewed news website in the country and then into the world,” one staffer told The Australian.

“The only way you could achieve that is by dumbing down with Kardashian and celebrity gossip stories. She was obsessed with reach but had little interest in quality or content. She just didn’t understand public broadcasting or public interest journalism.”

Staffers say there was also widespread anger that head of news Gavin Morris appeared to have “fallen in line with the Guth­rie strategy” rather than standing up to her and “defending his turf”.

“It had become this two-tier ­organisation. On one side, you had journalists trying to do their jobs as more and more resources were being funnelled away on stupid projects like ABC Life to a whole new team of people standing around ‘ideating’ on how to make the ABC a better place.’’

ABC insiders say in the past five months, Ms Guthrie had effectively become a “dead woman walking”. By April, she had been sidelined by chairman Justin Milne and Louise Higgins, the ABC chief financial officer, took on some of Ms Guthrie’s day-to-day role as the managing director spent increasing amounts of time back in Singapore with her husband, restaurateur Darren Farr.

By May, Ms Guthrie was also notably missing from the budget estimates committee hearings in Canberra, sending the ABC’s head of editorial, Alan Sunderland, in her place to field a barrage of questions over complaints about ABC bias by the Turnbull government.

Of all the stumbles and missteps by Ms Guthrie, it was perhaps her Larry cards for “awesomeness” that sounded the final death knell.

The Larry cards, a staff reward scheme with giveaway Google headphones, was launched by Ms Guthrie two weeks ago in a desperate effort to lift staff morale, which had “gone through the floor”.

“It was mercilessly ridiculed, externally and internally; the board was just mortified,” one senior ABC correspondent recalls.

“We were completely alienated and she comes up with these US-style reward cards with a cheesy cartoon character called Larry.”

The Larry cards came on top of another Guthrie PR fiasco two months earlier, an open invitation to staff to come up with “ABC principles”, for which they would also be rewarded with cheap gewgaws.

In the Sydney newsroom, hollowed out by the latest savage redundancies, one staffer recalls outraged journalists throwing things around the office and crafting very uncorporate-like ­responses: “Which one of you c..ts unplugged my computer?” was one suggestion.

“It was this corporate cult ­Google-style culture levelled at cynical media types who are passionate about what they do and don’t actually need to be motivated by cheap marketing hype hoopla,’’ a veteran ABC journalist explained.

Ms Guthrie was reportedly “devastated” at her sacking, saying said there was “no justification” for the board’s actions. Yet within an hour of her departure, some ABC journalists tweeted joyfully about her demise.