Morale among the staff at The Australian Financial Review has been given a big whack by the poaching of long time staffer John Stensholt by The Australian. The hiring was revealed in an announcement in the Weekend Australian and the paper made it clear it would be using his talents to beef up its coverage of the wealthy, which the AFR has had a lock on for years. Stensholt had been head of the AFR’s Rich List (inherited from the old BRW Rich List) which is a goldmine so far as advertising, stories and contacts are concerned.

The Oz said Stensholt “will head up a new unit dedicated to developing content about Australia’s most successful companies and individuals”. One of the areas for Stensholt is to develop lists — a rival for the Rich List is on the cards. The next AFR Rich List is due late next month and is all but finished, except for the last round of checking, editing, etc.

Staff at the AFR though are very upset that he has been poached without a real effort from AFR management to make a counter offer good enough to retain Stensholt. He has been at Fairfax for around 19 years, starting at BRW back in the Olympic year, and the AFR since 2010 when it assumed total control of the defunct BRW. The Rich List idea was the only part of BRW retained by Fairfax in the merger, with Stensholt a key because of the complexity in running the list system.

As usual when a valuable staffer is lost, senior management are now casting around for someone to blame other than themselves. Joanne Gray has been mentioned. She was recently promoted to managing editor at the AFR earlier this year to improve managing staff and career plans, but as she’s only been in that role a few weeks she can’t be blamed for the loss of Stensholt. Staff say he gave AFR management the chance to make a credible counter offer to the one he had from the Oz, but there was nothing substantial forthcoming. There is a feeling he saw himself as increasingly unappreciated and underpaid when the Oz made its offer. In terms of the threat to the AFR’s finances, his loss is more important than the recent loss of Laura Tingle defecting to the ABC’s 7.30 program. The Rich List is perhaps the single largest profit generator at the AFR.

Editor-in-chief Michael Stutchbury is seen as the one responsible for this loss, but many feel he’s been more interested in campaigns such as supporting corporate tax cuts than in managing his staff. Stutchbury reports to Chris Janz, who is the head of Fairfax’s metro papers. AFR staff say that had James Chessell, group executive editor of several Fairfax papers, been involved in the AFR, Stensholt would have received a solid counter offer and possibly been retained.

Crikey contacted the AFR for comment.