Rhoda Karpatkin, Who Led Consumer Reports for Decades, Dies at 93

Rhoda Karpatkin, who pressed for painstaking product testing for security and high quality whereas selling comparability searching for worth throughout greater than 4 many years at Consumers Union as counsel, govt director and president, died on Friday at her house in Manhattan. She was 93.

The trigger was mind most cancers, her daughter, Deborah Karpatkin, stated.

Ms. Karpatkin, a New York lawyer and civil rights advocate, had served for 16 years because the nonprofit group’s counsel when she was chosen in 1974 as govt director, the primary lady to carry that place. Consumers Union, the writer of Consumer Reports, later modified its title to Consumer Reports.

“Rhoda led CR to become the trusted name and consumer champion we are today,” Marta L. Tellado, the president and chief govt of Consumer Reports, stated in an announcement.

In 1993, Lear’s journal known as Ms. Karpatkin “the nation’s smartest shopper.”

Under her management, subscriptions to the journal, which accepts no paid promoting, greater than doubled, to 4.3 million, and in 2000, the group created what was then the most important pay web site, with 350,000 subscribers. Ms. Karpatkin additionally raised $40 million to construct a brand new headquarters in Yonkers, N.Y., and an car testing monitor.

The group notably “used its product safety expertise to publicize safety hazards, advise regulators, and communicate with Congress,” in response to “Watchdogs and Whistleblowers: A Reference Guide to Consumer Activism” (2015), by Stephen Brobeck and Robert N. Mayer.

“Rhoda combined an unwavering passion for the little guy with a smart, strategic sense of how to effect change,” stated Kimberly Kleman, a former editor of Consumer Reports. “Working for and with Rhoda was more than a job — it was a mission.”

She added, “It’s also important to recognize that Rhoda was one of the first modern-day publishers who believed that people would pay for content they considered valuable — you didn’t have to give it away, or undervalue it.”

Consumer Reports, which charges and compares merchandise, prides itself on editorial independence and is supported by grants and donations in addition to subscriptions.

Since the group’s founding in 1936, it had by no means misplaced or needed to settle a lawsuit associated to a product evaluation or comparability or evaluation, stated Barrie Rosen, a spokeswoman.

After Ms. Karpatkin was elevated to govt director, the group’s board was divided over whether or not it ought to proceed to give attention to product testing or leverage its status to foyer for product security and different legislative and regulatory reforms.

Ms. Karpatkin and Betty Furness, a board member and former New York City client affairs commissioner, believed Consumers Union may do each. The client advocate Ralph Nader, then a member of the board, break up with the group, arguing that it ought to think about effecting change.

The group struggled through the Reagan administration, its revenues pummeled by a weak economic system at a time when the federal government’s client protections had been being curtailed. The Reagan administration, Ms. Karpatkin advised The New York Times in 1982, had “eviscerated the Consumer Protection Agency.”

“And the Federal Trade Commission,” she added, “now takes the view that consumers are willing to risk their dollars in the marketplace and buy products that are shoddy and falsely advertised. I think there will be a field day for fraudulent advertising and for shoddy products.”

Rhoda Alayne Hendrick was born on June 7, 1930, in Brooklyn to Charles and Augusta (Arkin) Hendrick, immigrants from Eastern Europe. Her mom was a homemaker, her father a salesman.

After graduating from Lafayette High School, she enrolled in Brooklyn College, the place she edited the The Vanguard, a scholar newspaper, and was denounced by the Student Council president as left-wing. After incomes a bachelor’s diploma in 1951, she determined to pursue regulation as an alternative of journalism.

She wished “to do important things, not report on them,” she advised The Times in 2000.

In 1951, she married Marvin M. Karpatkin; he died in 1975. In addition to their daughter, she is survived by two sons, Herb and Jeremy Karpatkin; 10 grandchildren; and 4 great-grandchildren. Her associate, Bruno Aron, died in 2009.

Ms. Karpatkin graduated from Yale Law School in 1953 and practiced from 1954 via 1974, specializing in client and schooling regulation. She represented conscientious objectors and dealt with civil liberties instances. As chairwoman of an Upper West Side group faculty board in Manhattan, she was lively within the faculty decentralization motion.

As govt director of Consumers Union, Ms. Karpatkin hewed to her early commitments to labor, civil and girls’s rights. She championed a single-payer well being care system, underneath which medical care is offered and paid for by one public authority.

As president of the International Organization of Consumers Unions (which was renamed Consumers International), she monitored the insurance policies of multinational firms, the affect of globalization and commerce agreements. During her travels to Africa, Latin America and Asia, she urged governments and enterprise executives to make well being care and ample meals provides a basic human proper.

She retired in 2001.

As a younger lady, Ms. Karpatkin advised The Times, she regarded Consumers Union as “as one of the quintessential do-good organizations.”

“You just got the feeling they couldn’t be bought, couldn’t be seduced,” she stated.