Being first – the primary criterion for 24-hour news channels – is increasingly the least interesting and effective value they offer.
But skill is far from being the only, or even primary, criterion for what makes art art.
At independent book chain Foyles, Jonathan Ruppin said he'd be backing Byatt to win, praising the judges for selecting a shortlist where "strong storytelling" seems to have been their primary criterion for inclusion.
If your primary criterion for success is economic performance per square metre, it's hard to beat the mostly immigrant micro-entrepreneurs that LSE ethnographer Suzi Hall studied in a project called Ordinary Streets.
The bill prohibits the use of the number of arrests or citations issued by an officer as the sole or primary criterion for promotion, demotion, dismissal or the earning of any benefit.
From ancient Athens to South Sudan, birth to certain parents, or in a certain territory, has been the primary criterion for citizenship.
My primary criterion for judging the two candidates was the extent to which they actually addressed these excellent questions, rather than exploiting the time for their own purposes.
First, according to the standard biological species definition wherein reproductive isolation was the primary criterion for separate species status, Neanderthals and modern humans might represent two subspecies of H. sapiens, as many paleoanthropologists have contended.
But it was always vulnerable to what Mr Fukuyama calls "the bad emperor problem" as well as to the hardwired human tendency to make ties of kinship the primary criterion for conferring wealth, power and status.
"We call on Universities UK, on behalf of member university vice-chancellors and principals, to oppose the discriminatory treatment of non-EU students in all forms and publicly affirm that the quality of academic work should be the primary criterion for determining academic standing," the letter says.
Still, Richard J. Shaughnessy, who has tested numerous air purifiers in his capacity as director of the University of Tulsa's indoor air research program, said that the primary criterion for selecting an air cleaner should be its ability to effectively remove airborne particles.
