The brain drain at Consumer Reports

Jeff Fox, the former tech editor at Consumer Reports, writes on Alternet about the loss of talent at the personal finance magazine in recent years.

Fox writes, “The following chart I put together for my investigative site, StateoftheNet.Net, shows the more than 210 years’ journalistic experience that has marched out the door of the magazine’s Yonkers, NY headquarters since late 2012.

“Until now, you wouldn’t know about this exodus, or that Consumer Reports eliminated its entire editorial division in 2013, because in late 2012, CR removed its longtime editorial masthead from the magazine. This flight of talent occurred for one simple reason: A group of senior managers, some of them newcomers to Consumer Reports, induced most of the editors to leave because those executives were certain that they knew better than the existing editorial staff did what kind of magazine consumers wanted. (For CR readers’ reaction, see the reader comments below).

“Just how these executives managed to induce some of America’s best consumer journalists to abandon the magazine they loved is a story for another time and place. For now, I will tell you the main reason I left CR in 2014 after 24 years. In the previous two years of my service there, the organization’s leaders had exhibited what I considered a serious decline in integrity and accountability, the likes of which would have been unthinkable during my many years there.”

Read more here.