Here & there
Seinfeld back on NBC with reality show
By Louisa Ada Seltzer
Feb 26, 2009 - 1:03:36 AM

Seinfeld returning to NBC with reality show
Jerry Seinfeld is returning to NBC, but this time he’ll be behind the camera. The network has ordered six episodes of the reality show “The Marriage Ref,” which Seinfeld created and will executive produce. “The Oprah Winfrey Show” producer Ellen Rakieten will also work as an executive producer on the project, in which celebrities, comedians and athletes will mediate troubled marriages and give couples advice. Even though the comedian isn’t planning on appearing on the show himself, his voice will be used in commentaries. Seinfeld is quick to note that this will be a comedy show rather than a therapy show, saying that after being married himself for nine years, he realizes the potential for comedy. “The Marriage Ref” is scheduled to premiere sometime next fall. Seinfeld, of course, starred in the sitcom “Seinfeld,” one of NBC’s most successful shows ever, which ended its run 11 years ago.

Paper cuts: Three papers laying off 335 workers
Newspaper cuts have become de rigueur over the past two years, but yesterday was particularly brutal, even by recent standards. Three papers announced they will lay off more than 300 employees combined, including a number of editorial positions. The biggest cuts will come at the San Antonio Express, which will eliminate 15 percent of its staff, or 135 jobs, as well as leaving some 30 open positions unfilled. Seventy-five positions will come from the newsroom. Meanwhile, the Tribune Co.-owned Hartford (Conn.) Courant said it will slash 100 jobs, including 30 in the newsroom, which has lost 100 employees since the beginning of last year. A small number of those layoffs will come from the nearby Advocate weekly papers and Courant direct mail service Valu Mail. The Courant management blamed local business conditions and not the bankruptcy filing made by Tribune at the end of 2008. Finally, A.H. Belo’s Providence (R.I.) Journal will eliminate 100 jobs, including 26 part-timers in the advertising department and 18 full-timers in the newsroom.

Matthews fesses up to ‘Oh God’ comment
Chris Matthews’ mouth continues to get a real workout from his foot. The MSNBC host came under conservative fire yesterday after audio was released of him muttering, “Oh God,” just before Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s Republican response to President Barack Obama’s speech Tuesday. After a few furious hours of online guessing over who had voiced the comment, which was just barely audible, Matthews fessed up during last night’s edition of “Hardball.” He claimed the comment was directed at the “peculiar stagecraft” of Jindal’s speech, saying: “Was this some mimicking of a president walking along the state floor to the East Room? And at the same time that the Republicans are so far from Washington that they can't be blamed for anything?” The comment, Matthews insisted, was not directed at Jindal or his remarks, but conservative bloggers didn’t buy it, with Newsbusters calling it “another journalistic new low.” It’s not the first time Matthews has gotten in trouble with either party. He was criticized for comments about both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama during the primary season.

NYT: Oops, that blog was really a put-on
Yes these are hard times, as we learn reading The New York Times, and especially hard for women who date bankers as the nation's entire financial structure goes kapooey. One could just imagine the stress in their lives. One can also begin to imagine the stress being felt by the corrections desk of the Times upon learning that the paper had been skunked into running a story about how those put-upon women of put-upon men had started a support group and the requisite blog, Dating a Banker Anonymous (www.dabagirls.com.). Turns out, it was just a prank, a joke upon these times and The New York Times, as the women later admitted to the paper after the story ran. Headlined "It’s the Economy, Girlfriend," the story is written in classic Times style, light and yet earnest, as in this sentence: "Dawn Spinner Davis, 26, a beauty writer, said the downward-trending graphs began to make sense when the man she married on Nov. 1, a 28-year-old private wealth manager, stopped playing golf, once his passion." How do you correct a story with a sentence like that? With difficulty. The correction, which appeared yesterday, is described as an Editors' Note. In so many words, perhaps too many, it concedes the women spun them a yarn they swallowed whole without ever quite saying so. It ends with this statement: "Had the nature of the blog been made clear at the outset, the article would have described it accordingly, not as a support group."

Survey says more people look online for news
Here’s more bad news for traditional media. It turns out just over two-thirds respondents in a new survey said they believe traditional journalism is out of touch with what Americans are looking for in their news. The survey of 1,979 adults, a We Media/Zogby Interactive online poll of 1,979 adults, also had other bad news for traditional news media. It found that 70 percent of those polled think that journalism is important for their local communities, yet 64 percent are dissatisfied with journalism in this environment. The survey also looked at the continuing shift from traditional media to online. Some 48 percent said that the internet is their primary source of news and information. That’s up from 40 percent last year. Some 29 percent cited TV as their primary source, followed by radio at 11 percent and newspapers at 10 percent. The percentage relying on the internet as their main source of news and information is highest for adults 18-29. Some 55 percent of this age group said they get the majority of their news from the internet.