Mark Glaser has an OJR piece up about Cook's Illustrated, which has drawn 80,000 paid subscribers.

Glaser credits "cross-promotion and deep research" with the site's financial success.

The truth is simpler, and comes in one word -- credibility. Glaser sums it up this way, "the Consumer Reports of food." (That's publisher Chistopher Kimball, from an appearance on CBS.)

It's an apt description. I pay for Consumer Reports online. I don't use it often, but when I face a big purchase, I get my money out. Because CR is absolutely, 100% credible. There are no ads. There are no conflicts of interest. Everything they do is about earning my trust -- mine, not any vendors -- and they succeed at that.

It's not an easy way to go. Cook's founder Kimball (a wonderful writer, by the way) had another magazine, which did accept ads, back in the day. He got out of it. He left the business for a while, retreating to his Vermont farm. And he came back with this simple idea. Earn credibility, then charge for it.

It was not an easy haul. Kimball didn't have big financial backers. He really needs to avoid them, in order to avoid the resulting conflicts, especially that ogre known as "profit maximization," which holds the soul as just another economic good.

It's not. And there's a powerful lesson for everyone in that.