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

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Rhoda Karpatkin, who pressed for painstaking product testing for safety and quality while promoting comparison shopping for value during more than four decades at Consumers Union as counsel, executive director and president, died on Friday at her home in Manhattan. She was 93. The cause was brain cancer, her daughter, Deborah Karpatkin, said. Ms. Karpatkin, a New York lawyer and civil rights advocate, had served for 16 years as the nonprofit organization’s counsel when she was selected in 1974 as executive director, the first woman to hold that position. Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports, later changed its name to Consumer Reports. “Rhoda led CR to become the trusted name and consumer champion we are today,” Marta L. Tellado, the president and chief executive of Consumer Reports, said in a statement. In 1993, Lear’s magazine called Ms. Karpatkin “the nation’s smartest shopper.” Under her leadership, subscriptions to the magazine, which accepts no paid advertising, more than doubled, to 4.3 million, and in 2000, the organization created what was then the largest pay website, with 350,000 subscribers. Ms. Karpatkin also raised $40 million to build a new headquarters in Yonkers, N.Y., and an automobile testing track.