The next few hundred words will do me, and my profession, no earthly good.I don’t think everyone writ large hates journalism or journalists. I think most people don’t think much, if at all, about the media and its function. Even though it is the first profession mentioned in the First Amendment of this country’s Constitution, its mission viewed as that important to the Founding Fathers.I do, though, think a lot of people on social media — if they are, indeed, people, and not bots — hate the media, and will take every opportunity to crap on it, and its mission. Because it is in the best interest of those people/bots to corrode journalism and journalists, whether they cover the Jacksonville Jaguars or the president of the United States, to make what we do seem meaningless and irrelevant, and to take us down a peg by delegitimizing the importance of our work.

If we’re taken down any further, we’ll hit the earth’s core.

To be clear: This latest smackdown of the press was, mostly, an own goal — a defensive overreaction by many in my industry to, let’s say, an unusual postgame exchange between Lynn Jones, the longtime associate editor of the Jacksonville Free Press, in its 40th year of serving the Black community of Jacksonville, and Jacksonville Jaguars coach Liam Coen.

Jones has covered the Jaguars for years and makes no pretense that she’s a supporter of the team because it’s part of the community she and her paper serve, and the presence of an NFL team is good for her community. In this, Jones and her paper have every right to be at a news conference and ask questions, and certainly as much right as the Florida Times-Union, the big paper in town, or The Associated Press or ESPN or The Athletic for that matter.Jones didn’t ask a question when given the mic after the Jaguars’ tough, last-second loss to the Buffalo Bills on Sunday. She gave an obviously still-emotional Coen a pep talk, a statement of support. And absolutely no one outside of that press room would have given it a second thought had ESPN’s insider Adam Schefter not only reposted the exchange Sunday afternoon, but also given his seal of approval for it to his 11 million X followers.

What followed was as much a reaction by media people to Schefter’s approval as to the actual event.

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