I've often wondered about this. I grew up loving computer magazines, trusting everything they published. Was there actually more credibility with the information back then, or did it have more to do with the fact that far fewer "sources" had the ability to disseminate information (good or bad) and there was a natural system of checks and balances about what got published? We tended to believe what appeared in print because we assumed the info was verified before ink hit the page. These days, of course, we know better than to just blindly trust sources, but still get tricked into doing so anyway.
I have no answers on this, I guess, but it is something worth thinking about.
From my experience it was more "reliable" in that multiple people had looked at it before it went to print; but they'd make mistakes, too. Half the fun was reading the letters to editor pointing out mistakes.
Nowadays, the people who would've subscribed to computer magazines go online. PC Magazine and PC World moved online and it worked very well for them.
There's far more online, but also misinformation.