Bashing Jacksonville gets a little old

[finehoe]

LOL.  That picture almost looks like its been photoshopped and someone put his head on another body.

[simms3]

The guy looks like an idiot, and he probably is wearing jorts!

I still stand by that while we need to continuously get with the picture and make our city better (and advertise it, little St. Augie spends at least 4x as much on advertising than Jax), it takes a certain person to feel comfortable moving to this city where everyone already has history and everyone knows each other.  Most other sunbelt cities are every bit as sprawling and have almost all of the same problems, but people are so new, so transient, and everyone is in the same boat so everyone feels more comfortable.  Unless you are coming from a similar environment up north or are trying to raise a family (and those trying to raise a family people will always move to Clay or St. Johns until we fix our school problem), you are going to pass Jax up for a newer, more modern city, where most people have no clear background and nobody knows each other on more than a superficial basis.  This sort of exclusivity makes people jealous and our conservative attitudes (well maybe socially the latter isn't exactly a good thing) don't win favors with the media, which including the sports media, is pretty liberal.

[billy]

I think Jacksonville has soul.

[Wacca Pilatka]

I think the analysis offered upthread is giving this writer too much credit.

A lot of members of the sports media are lemmings who follow a trend.  It's trendy to bash Jacksonville because it's a smaller market, in the South, and relatively low-profile, all of which are anathema to the trend-makers in the sports press.  The negativity toward Jacksonville began during the expansion race, and after dying down for a while due to the Jaguars' initial success and the city's intense response, it re-emerged when the city hosted the Super Bowl and sportswriters in search for an easy story (as always) decided to pick on the smaller, Southern city without as many obvious tourist sites.  (Full disclosure, I am an outsider who regularly visits Jacksonville and thinks it has a lot to offer in the way of tourism, but in ways that are subtle compared to other Florida destinations and not at all well marketed.)  Not-easily-understood but easily mocked factors such as the tarps and the Tebow cult have contributed more recently, along with last year's ticket sales swoon that has led to this year's exceptionally impressive sales surge being more or less ignored.

Most Jacksonville criticism from the sports press comes from those who have never been there or have the slightest and most peripheral experiences with the city, and are just looking for an easy story to write.  It's not legitimate criticism founded in experience or fact, even if portions of it occasionally are accurate by accident.  I maintain that even if you took all these guys to Kingsley Plantation and the LaVilla Museum and Avondale and San Marco for a day and showed them the city's wonderful hospitality, they'd still write the same article because it's easy and the prevailing, expected trend to follow.  Those from competing cities in the region cannibalistically and enthusiastically follow along even if they know the city well.

Tony Kornheiser started this garbage when he wrote his Super Bowl column that he later admitted was written without having ever visited the city, and then he started piling on with the "unknown city, unknown players, unknown team" mantra whenever there was an MNF broadcast in Jacksonville.  And the lemmings followed.

It is EXACTLY the same criticism in all circumstances and has been since '93.  You can wine and dine them at Morton's and they'll still write that the best restaurants in town are Applebee's and Waffle House.

[simms3]

^^^^^Agreed, but I think there is a slightly more complex reason as to why Jacksonville of all places is the place to pick on.  It's not just sports writers (and all media are lemmings, I love hearing newsbites from all the different media pertaining to one event and they all use the same exact phrases as if there is one person behind the scenes telling everyone what to say).  The fact that Jax is in the south doesn't help, the name of the city doesn't help, the fact that our city is a "red" city in elections doesn't help, but I think it goes even deeper than all of that.  The amount of pure vitriol directed at Jacksonville is the same amount of hate you would see coming from a school-aged child who was jealous of another.  It's the same thing on a much larger scale.

[Captain Zissou]

What is the identity of Jacksonville? I often have people visit, and rack my brain on where to take them to "show off Jacksonville", eventually I give up and realize it really is the gateway to Florida and that is about it- a stop on the way to everywhere else in Florida. Can anyone name one place/thing to go/do that someone would actually fly to Jacksonville for (other than work)?

An easy Saturday starts with brunch at biscotti's, a stroll from Stinson park across the Ortega bridge then around El Dorado Ct and over to Stockton Park,  spend an hour or so downtown, grab a beer at bold city, look at the quirky five points shops, go to Mossfire or O'brothers,  walk around memorial park, then finish the night at either the Loft/Kickback's, or Dos Gatos/Lit.  Then wake up the next morning and hit up Metro Diner or Orsay for breakfast/hangover cure.

This is what happens when you let 90% of the city turn into sprawl that no one cares about. That is all a visitor will see if they don't take it upon themselves to find the urban core neighborhoods (which they have most likely been warned against doing).

When I mention to people that I mostly go to places in Riverside/Springfield, you'd think I had just told them I was nursing a slight crack addiction.  Almost the first thing they say is "Is it safe over there?" or "Have you ever gotten jumped?"  The only place I've ever gotten jumped was in Gainesville, hahaha. 

[billy]

I was in town last week for a fw days and roamed about Riverside, Avondale, DT and Springfield
during the evening.

Great time/was not harmed.

[finehoe]

they all use the same exact phrases as if there is one person behind the scenes telling everyone what to say

Like this?

In purporting to "take a look back" at how the economic recovery plan "grew, and grew, and grew," Fox News' Jon Scott referenced seven dates, as on-screen graphics cited various news sources from those time periods -- all of which came directly from a Senate Republican Communications Center press release. A Fox News on-screen graphic even reproduced a typo contained in the Republican press release.

http://mediamatters.org/research/200902100019

[Wacca Pilatka]

meh.

I doubt being southern or red has anything to do with it.

I'd say southern is a factor but not the only one.  A lot of major-outlet sportswriters do and have picked on the South in general, and I think Jacksonville is their most acceptable alternative because Charlotte (which was also picked on in '93, and in the late 80s when it was making its NBA expansion bid), Nashville (which was getting Jacksonville-level vitriol when the Oilers moved there and the NHL Devils considered it), and Atlanta (which was picked on heavily at the time of the Olympics bid) all have become recognized as trendy and happening to some degree or other.  Miami isn't really southern and is popular with sportswriters because they universally recognize that South Beach is cool.  New Orleans is popular with sportswriters because they universally recognize that Bourbon St. is cool.  (As the T-U put it in one of its better lines ever, New Orleans is the home of Bourbon Street; Jacksonville is the home of Water Street.)  So when they want to write a cheap column using all their favorite Southern stereotypes, Jacksonville is the invariable target.

But the reasons for their picking on the city go far beyond regional considerations.  Jacksonville caught their attention in the 80s with its seemingly undignified push to get several existing NFL teams to move there.  Then in 1993 they were all embarrassed with their wholesale dismissal of the Jacksonville expansion bid, so after attendance and on-field success shut them up for a while, they are again looking to crow that they were right all along and pro sports in Jacksonville didn't work.  I think that may be the biggest root of the bizarre level of vitriol we see.  Sportswriters don't like to be proven wrong.  The Super Bowl is root #2.  Sportswriters like to spend their travel allowance at Mons Venus in Tampa, on Bourbon St. in New Orleans, and at South Beach in Miami.  They're not going to be charmed by Avondale and San Marco, or if they are, they're still going to write the easy column about being disappointed that they're not in one of the other obvious flashy destination cities for the Super Bowl (exception: the year Detroit hosted it, when the lemmings all decided to write "Let's not bash Detroit; it's suffered enough" columns).  Then that Super Bowl year happened to coincide with the arrival of the tarps, and it's a lot easier to make 50 lame tarp jokes than figure out the real reason the tarps are there and report on them intelligently.

I definitely agree that most mainstream sportswriters are not "red" because a lot of them rather gratuitously wear their politics on their sleeve in their writing, but I don't think they're thinking too heavily about Jacksonville's politics when they bash it.

(More full disclosure: I was an unsuccessful part-time sports columnist for several years and wrote on this very topic at the time of the '05 Jacksonville and '06 Detroit Super Bowls.)

[Wacca Pilatka]

they all use the same exact phrases as if there is one person behind the scenes telling everyone what to say

Like this?

I don't think Simms was making a political reference there; he is quite correct that sportswriters from all over the country tend to repeat exactly the same phrases when referring to an event.  I can't count the number of Waffle House references I saw in columns about Jacksonville.  Virtually every sports commentator refers to Brett Favre as "having fun out there, just like a kid."  Etc. etc. etc.

[finehoe]

I don't think Simms was making a political reference there

Well, maybe not there but his/her repeated references to "liberals" and "red cities" tell us the lens through which he/she is viewing this.

[Wacca Pilatka]

I don't think Simms was making a political reference there

Well, maybe not there but his/her repeated references to "liberals" and "red cities" tell us the lens through which he/she is viewing this.

In fairness to Simms, Jacksonville generally has been a red city and many of the nation's most widely disseminated sportswriters do express opinions in their columns that strongly indicate left-of-center political leanings*.  I do not intend that as a political comment or to say red or blue is either positive or negative.  I don't know that Simms did either.  I think he was trying to identify part of the reason Jacksonville gets bashed reflexively.  If Jacksonville were a politically blue city and National Review went out of its way to bash it all the time, it'd be equally fair to note that trend.  

In short, politics may be a factor in the negativity toward Jacksonville.  I don't think it is one as posted upthread, but it's not unfair to note the possibility.

* Example: Peter King, a prominent NFL writer, inserts messages of support for Democratic candidates into the middle of his "Monday Morning Quarterback" feature out of nowhere.  He also started on the "London Jaguars/L.A. Jaguars" bandwagon even before the 2008 season began.  I think these two facts are completely coincidental and not related, but I also completely understand why someone might see a political element to certain sportswriters' contempt for Jacksonville.

[finehoe]

In short, politics may be a factor in the negativity toward Jacksonville. 

I tend  to doubt that.  Where is all the bashing of Houston, Dallas, & Denver?  They are all 'red' cities.

[Wacca Pilatka]

In short, politics may be a factor in the negativity toward Jacksonville. 

I tend  to doubt that.  Where is all the bashing of Houston, Dallas, & Denver?  They are all 'red' cities.

I doubt it too, as I stated in the longer posts upthread, but I can understand why someone would draw that conclusion.  I am not sure if you read the mainstream sports press regularly (and I apologize if I am making an incorrect and unfair assumption), but there is a strong tendency for the Rick Reillys, Peter Kings, Mike Lupicas, etc. of the world who have a national platform to insert political opinions into their columns, often rather gratuitously.  Most of the time they are opinions that one would broadly define as liberal.  (There's also one or two who drop conservative opinions into their columns equally gratuitously.  Rick Telander from Chicago, formerly of Sports Illustrated, comes to mind.  Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, he was the only mainstream sports columnist I noticed who bashed Detroit at the time of that Super Bowl.)

Incidentally, Denver is most definitely not a red city. 

[tufsu1]

In short, politics may be a factor in the negativity toward Jacksonville. 

I tend  to doubt that.  Where is all the bashing of Houston, Dallas, & Denver?  They are all 'red' cities.

as noted Denver is not a 'red' city....and Houston just elected the first openly gay big-city mayor in the U.S.