Lynn Jones didn’t have a question ready.
The 64-year-old veteran reporter for the Jacksonville Free Press was attending Jaguars coach Liam Coen‘s postgame press conference Sunday after his team’s 27-23 playoff loss to the Buffalo Bills.
Three other reporters had already asked game-specific questions when the microphone was passed to Jones, who was still looking at her notes and trying to figure out what to ask the first-year coach immediately after a heartbreaking end to the season.
She ended up not asking anything at all.
Instead, Jones spent 22 seconds of the six-minute news conference offering Coen words of encouragement and praise. Things like, “I just want to tell you congratulations on your success, young man” and “You hold your head up, all right? You guys have had a most magnificent season.”
Jones told The Times in a phone interview Tuesday that the words “just flowed out of me.”
Those words prompted what appeared to be a genuine smile from Coen, who answered each of Jones’ seven comments with a variation of “thank you, ma’am” or “I appreciate it.”
“The man was hurting,” Jones told The Times. But then “he starts smiling. ‘Yes, ma’am, yes, ma’am.’ And he felt better to know that it’s OK, it’s going to be OK. ‘I’ve done a great job,’ you know? So I was glad to make him feel that way.”
Video from the session quickly went viral. ESPN’s Adam Schefter wrote on X, “This is an awesome post-game exchange between a reporter and Jaguars HC Liam Coen.”
Associated Press reporter Mark Long expressed a different point of view.
“Nothing ‘awesome’ about fans/fake media doing stuff like that,” Long wrote in an X post that has since been deleted. “It should be embarrassing for the people who credentialed her and her organization, and it’s a waste of time for those of us actually working.”
Many others have weighed in on either side of the issue. ESPN personality Pat McAfee wrote in a lengthy X post that sports writers who criticized Jones’ actions are “curmudgeon bums” whose “opinions and thoughts are coming from a place of wanting to destroy sports.”
“feels like some journalism was actually done there,” McAfee added of Jones’ approach.
ESPN reporter Brooke Pryor wrote on X: “look, it’s a kind sentiment, but it’s not the job of a reporter to console a coach in a postgame press conference. Pressers are to ask questions to gain a better understanding of what happened or figure out what’s next — and do it in a limited amount of time.”
Time wasn’t an issue for Jones, who said every reporter with a question had the opportunity to ask it. She added that her brief interaction with Coen seemed to lighten the mood a bit in the room.
Rev. Bernice King, daughter of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., released a statement in support of Jones.
“Humanity + compassion done = unprofessional,” King wrote. “If so, the world could certainly use more ‘unprofessionalism’ right now. Thank you, Ms. Jones.”
Jones, who worked for the Jaguars as an administrative assistant during their inaugural season in 1995, has no problem admitting she’s a fan of the team she now covers. She also has been a reporter for more than three decades, including the last 18 years at the Free Press, and bristles at being labeled “fake media.”
“That’s where I draw the line,” she said. “That’s why I have not responded to the gentleman from the AP or anyone else for that matter, because it doesn’t affect me. I know my credibility. I know what I do and how we do it as an organization.
“They’ve been talking about us being a small-town market, but we have a big heart. We here at the Free Press, we do things intentionally and in a manner that’s reported from all eyes, you know, every community in that sense.”
On Tuesday, the Free Press — a member of the National Newspapers Publishers Assn., which represents more than 200 Black-owned newspapers in the United States — started selling apparel featuring the newspaper’s name, Jones’ name and some of the uplifting phrases she used during her interaction with Coen.
“Join the Free Press family and the Lynn Jones movement of nothing but love and get your t-shirt, hoodie or sweatshirt today,” the newspaper wrote on Instagram. “ALL PROCEEDS will go towards scholarships and internships to teach young journalists a positive spin to reporting!”
Jones said her actions at Coen’s news conference were typical for her. “Oh, that’s me,” she said, “anybody will tell you.”
She added: “I’m a passionate person, so when I’m in these environments, it’s easy to be able to have a warm interaction with these individuals.”
The post ‘The man was hurting’: Reporter explains her controversial interaction with Jaguars coach appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
