Back in January, Us Weekly's Kent Brownridge made an unfortunate comparison between Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston's split and the Asian tsunami that left more than 100,000 dead and plenty more injured and homeless, saying, "For a celebrity weekly, this is our tsunami."

He then publicly apologized the following day in the New York Daily News.

I used an inappropriate metaphor and I'm sorry that I in any way compared a monumental tragedy in human life to this. … I wish I'd said that this was our equivalent of covering the presidential election. I didn't mean to offend anybody.

Funny, then, that Fast Company editor John Byrne – who should feel real lucky for even having a job after Gruner + Jahr sold him out – would compare his situation of losing a cushy job to, uh, a hostage crisis.

It's a special sense, a feeling in the gut, one of sudden alarm. It's the sense that the magazine you're editing is about to fold. It came to John Byrne a few weeks back, on May 24.

That morning, in a stunning announcement, Gruner + Jahr said it was selling its four family magazines to Meredith. But left on the table in the deal were Inc. and Fast Company, Byrne's magazine. Word on the street was that someone would buy Inc.

Not so Fast Company. It was a goner, dead, or so the street had it.

"It was kind of like being in a hostage crisis," says Byrne, recalling the feeling that crept over him that day.

Well, John, you know our email address when you're ready to recant your statement.