Consumers Union’s New Consumer Media Unit Could Expand Beyond Consumerist; No Paid Ads Allowed

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Consumers Union’s New Consumer Media Unit Could Expand Beyond Consumerist; No Paid Ads Allowed

Consumers Union’s new non-profit subsidiary Consumer Media LLC launches on Jan. 1 with newly acquired Consumerist.com as its only property but the announcement release stressed that it’s the first. Does this mean more acquisitions are on the way? “The short answer is we don’t know,” Ken Weine, VP-communications, told us. “We may down the road acquire or create new items.” Consumer Media is viewed as a way to expand the nonprofit’s consumer advocacy mission and to take advantage of a growth spurt in recent years.

For now, the new subsidiary sets boundaries between Consumerist, acquired this week from Gawker Media, and CU’s Consumer Reports magazine and website. “The message we’re trying to project—and the reality will reflect this—is we’re not purchasing Consumerist to make it into Consumer Reports and we wanted for that, among other reasons, to structurally create some distance between the two.”

More after the jump...

But that distance doesn’t include a change CU’s policy towards advertising. Weine said the only ads on Consumerist will be house ads for Consumer Reports products. ConsumerReports.org has 3.3 million paid subscribers and provides a blend of premium and free content. Plans call for Consumerist to remain free. Weine: “As of now the only thing in Consumer Media is free content and that’s our intention.” So what’s the business model? Weine suggests stepping back first to see the business model for Consumers Union, which is 90 percent subscription supported. The business model for Consumerist is introducing more people—and younger people, as we reported yesterday when the sale became public—to Consumer Reports products but Consumerist editorially is also part of that overall consumer advocacy mission.

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Staci D. Kramer

@sdkstl Dec 31, 2008 6:08 PM ET

Posted In: Advertising, Media & Publishing, Magazines, Social Media, Nanopublishing, consumer union

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Michael Karesh

Definitely good compared to the Consumerist going away. However, I’m personally concerned about this purchase.

I operate TrueDelta.com, which provides vehicle reliability information. Our information has two large advantages over that of Consumer Reports:

1. Report actual repair rates, not just vague dots, to make the differences between models much clearer.

2. Results promptly updated four times a year; so our information averages about ten months ahead of CR’s.

But, since we’re a competitor, you’ll never see CR mention our information, and I’m personally not allowed to mention my site in their forums–even when I have information that they cannot provide. Now that they’ve bought the Consumerist, I suspect the same will be true for it.

Quite a few times a journalist has told me that he can’t write about the unique information TrueDelta.com offers car buyers, because part of what the site offers competes with information offered by their employer.

In other words, from where I sit media consolidation isn’t a good thing. Each media outlet has its own interests, and these come before the interests of readers. The larger these outlets get, the broader their interests get, and the more delimited their reporting gets. Even in CR’s case. CR is for CR first, consumers second.

They’ve somehow convinced many in the media that they deserve to be the sole voice for consumer interests. They’d love to either buy or silence all competitors. There are good reasons this isn’t allowed when the aspiring monopolist is a for-profit firm, and the same reasons should apply to CR.

learn management

Thanks Staci D. Kramer for sharing this wonderful piece of information. Its really a very informative article for me and I am working on the educational project of consumer unions, so, it will be very helpful for me in this scenario.