This is just a great example of how flawed the "site authority" concept is at Google. It completely pushes little guys out and unless you have an enormous budget to invest in getting the same authority "links", you're pretty much guaranteed to never make it.

It's also why sites like Forbes, CNET and others abuse this very flaw. Over the last 5 years, many of these big media sites have become experts in every single topic imaginable, even though a lot of the content they publish is completely unrelated to what they are known for.