Yeah, the new stuff.co.nz format is more better than the Royal New Zealand Herald.
Stuff is owned by Fairfax, who also own the Sydney Morning Herald and so it's no surprise that their layouts are similar (eg: they both happen to be 992px wide, and both have the silly (yet quite effective) little ad banner in the top right). There are fairly significant differences in the mark-up/CSS, however.
I've put them all head-to-head and thrown in tvnz.co.nz (cos it's similar) just for kicks.
Homepage analysis
Sydney Morning Herald:
Homepage weight (bytes/server requests): 238447 / 60
Markup errors: 237
CSS errors: unable to test properly due to page errors
stuff.co.nz:
Homepage weight (bytes/server requests): 156893 / 35
Mark-up errors: 127
CSS Errors: unable to test properly due to page errors, but estimate 29
NZ Herald:
Homepage weight (bytes/server requests): 285952(fat-ass) / 51
Mark-up errors: 200
CSS Errors: 8 (2 actual, 6 proprietry attributes)
tvnz.co.nz:
Homepage weight (bytes/server requests): 292697(obese) / 54
Mark-up errors: 271
CSS Errors: unable to test properly due to page errors
