Justin’s Rolodex speed-dial

NEVER mind what year or even decade it is; does the ABC’s supposed digital and internet whiz-kid, chairman Justin Milne really know what century we are in?

In damning sacked CEO Michelle Guthrie with (very) faint praise – or praising her with (less than) faint damns – he was quoted in our sister paper, The Australian, as saying: “She’s got, as they say in the trade, a great Rolodex.” Rolodex? Rolodex? Surely, Justin, you could have at least got it into the early days of the 21st century by referring to Michelle’s choc-a-bloc BlackBerry?

I certainly haven’t heard the reference to a “great Rolodex” in, oh, I don’t know – 12 years? 15 years?

And I doubt that anyone under 40 would even understand the reference.

Now, I do see that Amazon still sells them. But I’m told you have to prove you are older than 75 to be allowed to buy one: Amazon presumably doesn’t want to be sued for the paper cuts you can’t get on a smartphone. I don’t buy the claim the term has developed a generic life beyond its 20thcentury context; just as no one today would refer to having people on their phone’s “speed dial”.

As the argument between Milne and Guthrie was supposedly all about the ABC’s digital future, the use of the phrase by Milne did rather pose in a decidedly owngoal way the question of which of the two would be better to lead the ABC into that future.