A huge portion of those reviews were payola, plain and simple. If a reviewer didn’t provide at least a somewhat positive review (even for complete dreck), they were often blacklisted.

Can confirm.

In an industry I was in, the trade publication gave the "product of the year" award to whoever bought the most advertisements in the magazine.

I think that's true of all trade rags, as well as any top X under/over Y pubs.

I think so too. My brilliantly satirical boss at the time, called the team to attention and said something to the effect of:

(holding up the magazine cover) "I'd like to thank you for creating X magazine's product of the year!"

>he paused for a moment<

"Which is awarded to the highest ad-spend of the magazine for the year."

Absolute comedy, and a wonderfully satirical human being.

Blacklisted how? 20 years ago consumer reports was considered a trusted source and they purchased everything they reviewed. How are you going to blacklist someone from going to the store and buying your product?

CR is the exception, and that’s why they charge their subscribers a lot of money.

The vast majority of publications fund “reviews” in different ways.

Some publications you can pay to have your product “featured” in.

In some others, companies give a reviewer who has a reputation for favorable reviews free products. The unspoken expectation is that the reviews will drive sales and that the free product (and free content) train keeps going.

And yet others have serious conflicts of interest with their supporting advertisers.

Consumer Reports buys the products they review. They can't be blacklisted if they're not relying on the manufacturer to send them a free demo/item.

(Youtube/Blog) Reviewers get blacklisted by companies by not providing a positive review about a product they were given. As they rely on scooping type style reviews, this means they not only don't get a free product to review, but they can't review it until after it's for sale instead of being able to 'preview' it for people and get more clicks that way.

Only problem is that CR then needs to wait until release day to start its review. While the corrupt get advance copies to review that get released in advance, or are embargoed until release day, but still, will get published way before CR can publish a proper review.

Honestly "don't buy stuff right after it comes out" is one of the simplest things you can do as a consumer to not buy a lot of lemons, even if you don't read Consumer Reports.

The "gotta have everything day one (or earlier!) to be cool!" is the most successful piece of meta-marketing imaginable.

A lot of reviewers try to be relevant by reviewing new things before they hit the market. That makes the manufacturer the only source of the product and the manufacturers have no reason to provide early access to people writing bad reviews and writing a review a month after everyone else just doesn't attract nearly as much attention.

Was? The 10 bucks/month I pay for consumer reports is the best money I spend on a subscription!

They’re still quite strong.

CR was notable and trusted specifically because they were the only ones in the industry who did that.

Consumer Reports was (and still is!) so trusted because it is the one publication that lacks the usual conflicts of interest that every other publication has.

The Wirecutter (now part of NY Times) is another that doesn't accept freebie products, if I recall.

They do use affiliate links, so they have incentive to want you to buy _something_, but no incentive to give any particular brand or model a biased review.

Except when they drop a product from their recommended list when they don’t want to participate in an affiliate program: https://www.xdesk.com/wirecutter-standing-desk-review-pay-to...

I still can't believe people actually click on affiliate/tracking links. I get things based on Wirecutter reviews occasionally, but I always go to the product separately so it's not tracked.

YMMV but "review site with referral links" is a category of site I very much wish to avoid.

As long as it's a generic referral program (Amazon?) in general I find it at least somewhat ok - I can see how they're getting paid, and I can assume (maybe?) they aren't getting a special kickback to sell that particular product over another one at Amazon or whatever.

When it's seller specific affiliate programs? It's all just spam basically.

I have friends who used to be in the music instrument journalism industry, and the common approach was to only review what they liked.

They got a guitar or synth that was bad? They would just tell the manufacturer they would rather not say something bad.

Of course, after a while readers started asking questions, so the answer was to review products from companies not advertising in the magazines.

It seems like this is a recipe for being hungry. The only products they reviewed were products that no one advertised in their magazine?

No, no, let me rephrase: they would give good reviews to everyone that gave them free stuff that was good.

Customers asked "why aren't there any review saying a product is bad", so they started doing that with products whose manufacturers didn't advertise there or didn't give free stuff for review. They'd borrow, or buy a few Danelectro or Behringer pedals for $30 dollars just to make a bad review and "save face" to readers.

Basically they got "token bad products" to save face.

Wow, that’s pretty good hah! (Well, in a misleading the consumer but quite clever way anyway)

A decade plus ago I worked alongside a team of writers, and they always kept alcohol in their desks. I totally understand why now.

Oh, that's amazing, haha!

You definitely need a bottle for when you get some terrible product and you know the manufacturer won't like that it won't get reviewed.

Funny enough, the situation is even worse now: with YouTube reviewers, there's no more expectation of neutrality as with professional journalists in the past. So all quality reviews are praising products.

> in magazines that had some editorial oversight

such magazines had massive conflicts of interest and could not be trusted in the first place.