So guess what? It's four o'clock, and no working journalists have lost their jobs today! Well, not yet at least. Still, the horizon's looking dim for aspiring writers, as some publishing companies are freezing future book deals, and some newspaper publishers don't think six days of the week matter too much. The media deathwatch commences:

• Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, publishing home of literary heavyweights like Philip Roth, is no looking look for the next Jonathan Safran Foer (another of its authors), as a new company mandate has frozen the publication of any new writers. [Gawker]

• Esquire's latest e-newsletter may have featured innovative content and the sexiest woman ever alive, but it failed to find a sponsor. [FishbowlNY/Mediabistro]

• Sam Zell, owner of the Tribune Company, home of the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, says that today's readers are pretty much only interested in a newspaper's Sunday edition. [FishbowlNY/Mediabistro]

• And since real journalists are losing their job, the Newseum, a cutely named journalism museum, has laid off 25 staffers, perhaps in honor of the media's fallen soldiers. [WP]

• Ann Moore, the Time, Inc. CEO who has practically written these layoff posts for us, what with her firing everyone and all, is, interestingly enough, being honored by the Magazine Publishers of America. [Mixed Media/Portfolio]