<story><title>An upcoming story about Coinbase</title><url>https://blog.coinbase.com/upcoming-story-about-coinbase-2012afc25d27</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>avolcano</author><text>This is an odd thing to see widely published. I&amp;#x27;m at a company that had a rather detailed negative article written about us, and we were warned about it internally shortly before it was published, after the reporter had contacted us with details and questions. However, we didn&amp;#x27;t go public with a reaction until after it was out, since it seemed rather pointless to respond to something that hadn&amp;#x27;t been published yet, especially when we hadn&amp;#x27;t even seen it in full.&lt;p&gt;It is odd to me that they would preemptively go loud on this, drawing attention to a story that might not even get that much traction. It seems like it would have been much easier to just let that story go out and respond with a simple &amp;quot;We&amp;#x27;ve investigated this before and dispute the claims, except for these few unfortunate stories we can confirm happened, and here&amp;#x27;s how we will prevent them in the future.&amp;quot; What on earth do they gain with a preemptive memo like this? Are they really scared of their employees leaking this? Would anyone even pick up a story of &amp;quot;someone&amp;#x27;s about to publish a bad article about Coinbase&amp;quot;?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lacker</author><text>&lt;i&gt;It is odd to me that they would preemptively go loud on this, drawing attention to a story that might not even get that much traction.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s hard for me to imagine an NYT story getting less traction than a Coinbase post, though. So is this really drawing attention to the story? Maybe this is just drawing more attention to Coinbase&amp;#x27;s version of the story, rather than the NYT&amp;#x27;s version.&lt;p&gt;Basically, if you&amp;#x27;re going to end up publishing a counterargument to an upcoming news story, why not publish the rebuttal first? Maybe the tradition of waiting for a bad newspaper article, then immediately publishing a rebuttal, is an artifact of the olden days when there were no corporate blogs and social media, when there was no way to bring attention to a pre-rebuttal.</text></comment>
<story><title>An upcoming story about Coinbase</title><url>https://blog.coinbase.com/upcoming-story-about-coinbase-2012afc25d27</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>avolcano</author><text>This is an odd thing to see widely published. I&amp;#x27;m at a company that had a rather detailed negative article written about us, and we were warned about it internally shortly before it was published, after the reporter had contacted us with details and questions. However, we didn&amp;#x27;t go public with a reaction until after it was out, since it seemed rather pointless to respond to something that hadn&amp;#x27;t been published yet, especially when we hadn&amp;#x27;t even seen it in full.&lt;p&gt;It is odd to me that they would preemptively go loud on this, drawing attention to a story that might not even get that much traction. It seems like it would have been much easier to just let that story go out and respond with a simple &amp;quot;We&amp;#x27;ve investigated this before and dispute the claims, except for these few unfortunate stories we can confirm happened, and here&amp;#x27;s how we will prevent them in the future.&amp;quot; What on earth do they gain with a preemptive memo like this? Are they really scared of their employees leaking this? Would anyone even pick up a story of &amp;quot;someone&amp;#x27;s about to publish a bad article about Coinbase&amp;quot;?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fatbird</author><text>Everyone who has read this and then reads the NYT story will do the latter with the former in mind.  As much as possible, they&amp;#x27;re anticipating what the story will reveal and getting their objections on the record so that a reader can&amp;#x27;t help but view the story&amp;#x27;s assertions in light of the responses they&amp;#x27;ve already read.&lt;p&gt;Moreover, getting in front of this means adopting a stance of openness and transparency that, in itself, seems quite laudible.  As a PR strategy, this is good work, especially for a company that&amp;#x27;s already raised its profile on these topics earlier in the year.&lt;p&gt;Whether it&amp;#x27;s cynical PR strategy or sincere crisis management is left for the reader to decide.</text></comment>