This Week's Hit List

McGraw-Hill: In a press release dated today, McGraw-Hill announced some "restructuring" of their businesses in the fourth quarter of 2008. As usual, "restructuring" is code for "telling a whole bunch of people to leave and not come back."

In McGraw-Hill's case, that meant 215 people were terminated at McGraw-Hill Education, and an additional 160 in other divisions. (Some of those, in Financial Services and Information & Media, may well be publishing jobs of some kind as well.)

Best wishes to those canned by McGraw-Hill, and good luck for a speedy job search.

Borders: After dismal 4Q results, the top management of Borders -- CEO George Jones, CFO Ed Wilhelm, and Rob Gruen, Executive VP of Merchandising and Marketing -- were asked to pursue other opportunities, or perhaps to spend more time with their families. Unlike the 375 McGraw-Hill jobs, their positions were immediately filled.

I'll wish them good luck as well, but people at that level generally are well beyond the need for luck. So let's just hope that their golden parachutes are nicely soft and widely open.

Update:

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: Drenka Willen was unfired after -- and possibly because of -- a letter of complaint sent by her various Nobel Prize-winning authors to HMH head Tony Lucki -- reports The New York Observer. She's not in the office, and she's being made to retire in a few months, but I suppose it's better than being shoved out the door the same day.

Update II:

Random House/Pantheon: The Observer reports that Pantheon publisher Janice Goldklang has been let go after twenty-five years. No other layoffs were announced, but industry insiders expect more job losses at Pantheon and other Random House imprints.