Earlier today, this tweet showed up in my Twitter timeline. It leads with the text: “Quality to blame for declining news audiences, study suggests”

I retweeted it, and then commented, “The increased cost for news content, and the decreasing amount of truly unique content, show why people abandon news outlets.”

At first, I thought this applied just to news content. But no, it applies to many things in our life today; however news exemplifies it in a very unique way.

I’ve said before that “The Web democratized content” (along with music). Anyone can be a “journalist” – or at least a published writer, on the Internet today. But that just gets you published. Anyone can take the time to write a book, pay for an on-demand publisher to print a copy, and voila!, they’re a published author. That doesn’t mean anyone will pay money for copies, read them, and recommend them to friends. Same on the Web.

I’m not only a producer of information, I’m also a consumer – and I have to tell you, as I browse the aisles of information that are out there, there’s a lot of digital junk food vying for our attention. There are a handful of news sources that break actual news, and a handful news sources that perform strong analysis. But more often, the Web and Twitter (and hours or days later, television stations and newspapers, respectively), are chock full of a self-aggrandizing punditry, where like the childhood game of “telephone”, non-news begins resonating and echoing, becoming louder and louder until it sounds like news. I’ve seen this happen with news about every major technology company, and recently saw it happen to a family member of a friend.

News feeds on sensationalism. Whether it’s bad news, “exclusive” news (whatever that means in the age of Twitter), an idiotic rumor based upon a leak from a supply chain provider, or worse, rumors based upon rumors, it spreads like gossip. In the end, it’s impossible for anyone to truly stand out, because everyone is stuck in this same rut of repeating the rumor.

So back to my point. Why are news audiences declining? Because conventional news outlets are being beaten to the punch. News outlets have generally shrunk in content and quality, while increasing in price, and throwing in advertising technology that gets in the way of the content and the user’s experience. I’m not sure that content paid for primarily by advertising is sustainable. But I can tell you if every time people visit your site you give them interstitial ads, pop-ups/pop-unders/pop-ins, or other hostile advertising that gets in the way of the content, rather than adding value (yes, that’s possible), you’re going to lose readers over time. Pissing off your reader isn’t a good way to provide unique news in a sustainable way.

News has been democratized and commoditized to the point that if we buy a morning paper in one city, fly to another and grab another paper, we see the same syndicated news, with a thin veneer of geographically relevant content grafted on. Conventional journalism outlets are dying because they are slow, and don’t provide significant value to their consumer given the long wait time. They’re also often laden with ads, with articles that are slow to load (usually due to slow ad engines, ironically), and provide little value outside of news you could have seen breaking on Twitter some time ago if you were watching. News outlets that regurgitate twice-baked news without adding value are doomed to be paved over, parking lots of journalism times past.

This applies outside of journalism too. It’s called the first-mover advantage. Do something first, you can possibly own that market. Follow others, and you have to clearly demonstrate the unique value you provide beyond the first mover – or get buried in the melee of als0-rans vying to also catch up to the first mover.

If you want to be successful in anything, always be first, or always be unique. Those are your two choices. Much like any other job, there’s always someone waiting to fill your shoes if you stop providing unique value.