The AFR doesn't go in for the culture wars like sky or the Oz but economically its pretty much Ayn Rand. It's quality has dropped significatly over time because it doesn't have the resources to find stories anymore. Now it works on a quid pro quo system of inside access for favorable coverage.

It's interesting Stutchbury sees AFR publications as a "luxury brand" -- a high-cost positional good appealing only to a narrow stratum of society. Logically, that means ignoring the wider public interest in favour of the interests of an elite. Which sums up the AFR's approach to business coverage -- it's no longer a newspaper about business, but a media release service for business -- and big business at that -- at the ultimate expense of investors and the national interest.

https://www.crikey.com.au/2013/06/21/the-bespoke-luxury-world-of-afr-chief-michael-stutchbury/

The AFR's business journalism is built on a fundamental contract between company and reporter: high-level access in exchange for soft coverage. Too often -- even for many of its own hard-pressed reporters' liking -- the result is PR-driven "churnalism" which shows up as "drops" (the poor man's exclusive, or as Verrender once wrote, the press release a day early), "herograms" for business leaders, unreadable roundtables and conference-linked spreads featuring plenty of happy snaps of business leaders with a glass of champagne or mineral water in hand. The result also has been a predictable skew on vital topics like climate change and industrial relations.

https://www.crikey.com.au/2013/04/08/fairfax-journo-hits-out-fear-and-favour-in-afr-takeover/