signs of the times

First, Vanity Fair canceled its annual Oscar bash. Now one division of HarperCollins is asking its expense account owners to cut back on T&E:

When editors go out to lunch with an author or a literary agent, they’re expected to pick up the check. What to do, then, when your employer has told you that you’re not allowed to? That’s what’s happening this month over at the flagship imprint of HarperCollins, where Jonathan Burnham has instructed his staff to “halt all [travel and expenses spending, known as T&E] for the entire month of March.”

In a memo sent to the imprint’s editors a little over a month ago and obtained by The Observer, Mr. Burnham indicated that he had to implement the measure because the house’s T&E budget for fiscal year 2008 was “already dangerously overspent.”

It’s not that they’ll never eat lunch in this town again, though. Graciously, agents are coming to the “rescue.”