But that position is currently under attack.

Call it the new review zoo. Suddenly, consumer-critique sites are starting to multiply. Where once there was only Consumer Reports, John Q. Purchaser now has a handful of new outlets with which to discuss, rate and rant about every fridge or juicer he has ever bought.

Online since 1987 (it was one of the first Web publications, via Prodigy) CR has 410,000 online subscribers, while newcomers like Deja.com and Epinions, which give readers a venue for their own consumer reports, now draw 1.7 million and 1.2 million unique visitors respectively and command ad rates of up to $53 for every 1,000 page views. (Consumer Reports, of course, has a no-advertising policy for both its print and its online versions.)

In recent weeks, these upstart reviewmongers have garnered plenty of buzz. Last month Epinions.com ("a platform, not a publisher," says co-founder and CEO Nirav Tolia) took home the Webby Award for best service, an honor certain to bring in thousands of new readers and enable Tolia to boost his ad rates even further.

Meanwhile, Deja.com -- now well beyond its original function as a Usenet archive (which, after all, nobody was making money on) -- has entered the realm of e-commerce: Its new "Precision Buying Service" business model combines the site's consumer reviews with professional critiques (by name-brand outfits such as CNET and Rolling Stone), incorporating price-comparison tips and links to e-merchants. The site's revamped business plan has just elicited a third infusion of capital from its investors, to the tune of $12.5 million.

Deja.com CEO Thomas L. Phillips recently shrugged off CR as "living in the old-media paradigm." (Phillips knows from old media; he was the founding publisher of Spy magazine, where -- full disclosure -- I worked from 1988 to 1990.) His dismissive statement has some wondering whether the Internet has in fact trumped CR's ace. Is the venerable magazine, home of ceremonious testing and centralized data, out of step in the era of advertorials and Matt Drudge?

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