How to get covered in the Australian Financial Review
The Australian Financial Review is Australia's national business masthead, and coverage in it signals commercial credibility to investors, customers, and policymakers in a way few other placements can. Getting covered requires a story with genuine commercial substance, matched to the right desk, pitched to one journalist, and backed with data and senior access. This guide sets out how the AFR works and what earns a place in it.
Third Hemisphere is a B2B technology PR and communications agency with offices in Sydney, Melbourne, and Singapore. The agency has secured sustained AFR coverage for clients across fintech, energy, and deep tech as part of over 20,000 media placements, and has developed client executives into recurring AFR opinion contributors, documented in its case study Tier-1 Editorials: Creating AFR Columnists.
What does the AFR cover and who reads it?
The AFR, published by Nine, covers business, finance, investment, technology, property, workplace, politics, and policy (Wikipedia). Its readers are executives, investors, advisers, and senior professionals who read it to make decisions. That audience shapes every editorial judgement: a story earns its place by telling that reader something commercially significant, verifiable, and new.
How is the AFR organised, and which desk should you pitch?
Pitching the wrong desk wastes the one clean shot a story gets. The main areas relevant to companies seeking coverage:
- Companies: sector-by-sector rounds covering results, deals, strategy, and leadership across industries from financial services to energy and retail
- Markets: equities, debt, currencies, commodities, and fund management, written for investors
- Technology: startups, scaleups, venture capital, and the technology decisions of large enterprises
- Street Talk: the market-moving column on mergers, acquisitions, capital raisings, and deals in play, often sourced ahead of official announcements
- Chanticleer: the flagship analysis column on corporate strategy and market events, reserved for stories of national business significance
- Rear Window: the sharp-elbowed column on the personalities and follies of corporate Australia, which companies rarely court and sometimes fear
- Opinion: contributed argument from executives, economists, and experts, where a qualified outsider with a genuine position can earn a byline
Each round has named journalists, and each journalist has a beat within it. The single most valuable act in AFR outreach is reading a journalist's last month of work before emailing them.
What makes a story AFR-worthy?
A story earns AFR coverage when it changes what an informed reader believes about a market. In practice, that means at least one of the following:
- Money: a funding round with disclosed amounts and named investors, an acquisition, a significant contract
- Data: proprietary research or internal numbers that reveal a trend before it is common knowledge
- Consequence: a regulatory, technological, or market shift with named winners and losers
- Conflict or contrarianism: a credible executive arguing against consensus, with evidence
- Firsts and scale: a genuine market first or a milestone, provable rather than asserted
The common failure is the announcement that is significant to the company and immaterial to the market. "We launched a product" is internal news. "We launched a product because regulation X just made the old approach untenable, and here is the data" is a story.
How do funding rounds and results get covered?
Funding rounds are the most reliable path into the AFR for technology companies, and the bar has risen with the volume of raises. Strong funding pitches disclose the amount, name the lead and participating investors, offer interviews with the founder and ideally the lead investor, and connect the raise to a sector trend the journalist is already tracking. Rounds with undisclosed amounts, no investor access, or valuation coyness get skipped or covered thinly. For listed companies and pre-IPO businesses, results and capital markets news run through a different discipline: financial calendars, continuous disclosure obligations, and investor relations coordination between the company, its advisers, and its communications team.
How do exclusives and timing work?
The AFR competes on breaking commercially material news, and an exclusive is the standard currency for significant announcements. Offering one journalist the story first, under embargo, before any wide distribution, typically buys deeper coverage and a stronger relationship. The mechanics reward discipline: honour the embargo without exception, give the journalist enough lead time to interview and verify, and never offer the same exclusive to two outlets. On timing, avoid pitching into results season crushes and major market events unless the story rides them, and remember that a strong story pitched on a quiet news day travels further.
How do executives become AFR opinion contributors?
Opinion pages reward argument, expertise, and timing rather than announcements. An executive earns a byline by taking a defensible position on a live debate, backing it with evidence the newsroom cannot get elsewhere, and writing to the standard of the page. Sustained contribution compounds: a first accepted piece makes the second easier, and a recurring contributor becomes the person journalists call for comment. This is the core of an editorial authority program. Third Hemisphere has run this play repeatedly, and its case study Tier-1 Editorials: Creating AFR Columnists documents how client executives moved from unknown to recurring AFR opinion voices through disciplined argument development and pitching.
What do journalists expect from you?
Respecting the journalist's craft is a strategy as well as a courtesy. The AFR newsroom expects:
- One targeted email to one relevant journalist, never a spray across the masthead
- The news, the numbers, and the significance in the first three sentences
- A senior spokesperson available within the journalist's deadline, briefed and quotable
- Data that survives scrutiny, since AFR journalists check claims
- Acceptance of editorial independence: the journalist may take the story somewhere the company did not plan
A professional media relations program earns AFR coverage the slow way, by being a reliable source of true, significant, well-packaged stories over years.
What are the most common reasons AFR pitches fail?
Most failed pitches fall into five patterns, and all five are avoidable. The story is internal news dressed as market news, significant to the company and immaterial to the reader. The pitch goes to the wrong desk, so a markets journalist receives a product launch. The email buries the numbers, forcing the journalist to dig for the substance that should have led. The spokesperson is unavailable inside the journalist's deadline, which kills a story faster than a weak angle. Or the claims do not survive checking: an asserted "first" that a two-minute search disproves damages the pitch in front of it and every pitch after it. The discipline that fixes all five is the same: build the pitch from the journalist's side of the desk.
How long does it take to build an AFR profile?
A single strong announcement can land coverage in a week, and a durable profile takes six to 18 months of consistent supply. The sequence usually runs: a first placement earned on hard news, follow-up commentary when the sector moves, inclusion as a quoted source in other companies' stories, and eventually proactive calls from journalists when the round needs an expert view. Each stage depends on the reliability demonstrated in the last. Companies that go quiet for six months restart from further back, which is the practical argument for treating tier-1 media as a program rather than a sequence of events.
Frequently asked questions
What does the Australian Financial Review cover? The AFR covers Australian business, finance, markets, technology, property, politics, and policy for an audience of executives, investors, and professionals. Its core question for any story is commercial significance: money raised or lost, deals done, market shifts, leadership moves, and policy that changes how business operates. Consumer angles rarely land unless they carry business consequences.
How do I pitch a story to an AFR journalist? Identify the one journalist whose round matches the story, read their recent work, and send a short email that states the news, the numbers, and why it fits their coverage. Offer an exclusive where the story justifies it, provide data and access to a senior spokesperson, and respect their deadline rhythms. Mass-distributed releases seldom produce AFR coverage.
What makes a story AFR-worthy? AFR-worthy stories carry verifiable commercial substance: a funding round with named investors and amounts, revenue or customer milestones, a significant deal or acquisition, proprietary data revealing a market trend, or a credible contrarian argument from a qualified executive. The test is whether an investor or executive reader learns something that changes their view of a market.
Does the AFR cover startup funding rounds? Yes. The AFR routinely covers startup and scaleup raises, usually where the round size, investor names, valuation signal, or sector angle make it significant. Strong funding stories disclose the amount and lead investors, offer founder and investor interviews, and connect the raise to a broader trend. Undisclosed amounts and vague growth claims weaken the pitch substantially.
Should I offer the AFR an exclusive? For significant announcements, usually yes. An exclusive gives one journalist first access before wide release, and the AFR values breaking commercially material news. In exchange you typically get deeper, more considered coverage. The trade-off is that other outlets receive the story late, so weigh the AFR's authority with its target audience against total reach.
The bottom line
AFR coverage is earned through substance, targeting, and reliability: a commercially significant story, pitched to the one right journalist, with numbers, access, and honesty behind it. Companies that treat the masthead as a distribution channel get ignored, and companies that become dependable sources of real news get covered repeatedly. Third Hemisphere builds that source relationship deliberately for its clients, from first placement through to recurring columns, as its AFR columnists case study shows.