How Consumer Reports took on Apple

David Carr of the New York Times writes Monday about how Consumer Reports takedown of the new iPhone forced Apple CEO Steve Jobs to react when other business media failed.

Carr writes, “How did Consumer Reports make Apple blink? In large measure, the article in Consumer Reports was devastating precisely because the magazine (and its Web site) are not part of the hotheaded digital press. Although Gizmodo and other techie blogs had reached the same conclusions earlier, Consumer Reports made a noise that was heard beyond the Valley because it has a widely respected protocol of testing and old-world credibility. Mr. Jobs acknowledged as much, saying, ‘We were stunned and upset and embarrassed by the Consumer Reports stuff, and the reason we didn’t say more is because we didn’t know enough.’

“The organization — Consumer Reports is owned by the nonprofit Consumers Union — sells its subscribers dutiful research rather than pithy discourse, and it often goes unnoticed unless you are in the market for a new car or toaster. This time, its tests became an inflection point. (One that many tech reporters say Consumer Reports promoted endlessly, but who can blame them?)

“‘In my five years here, we have never done anything that has gone so viral, so fast,’ said Kevin McKean, editorial director of Consumer Reports. ‘That is not something that we made up or manufactured. It’s by no means a critical issue like some of the product safety conclusions we have reached over the years — no one has ever died from a dropped cellphone call — but it was obviously an issue that affected millions of consumers.'”

Read more here.