You go Will Fleet!

After laying off longtime Glendale photog Scott Roby, my former paper has decided to hire an accountant to be a general manager for the Glendale News-Press. The introductory memo from publisher Will Fleet:

Today it is my pleasure to announce that Simon Tam will be joining our TCN management team as General Manager of the Glendale/Burbank/Foothill operation, starting on January 23.

Simon is a CPA and brings a wealth of community newspaper management experience. With National Media, Inc., Simon served in various executive leadership roles, including publisher of the Palos Verdes Peninsula News and CFO/Chief Operating Officer of NMI corporate. Simon and his partners sold their newspapers to Copley a couple of years ago.

For the past year or so, Simon has been working in Financial Planning at the Los Angeles Times. Among other tasks, Simon has worked closely with TCN Business Manager Debbie Feyerabend on TCN financial matters. He will now oversee all day-to-day operations in Glendale.

In my view, this could go either way. Having an accountant could definitely be bad, and possibly result in more layoffs, because we all know that accountants look at the bottom line. However, an accountant could be good – if he’s a truly ethical accountant, then the overtime abuses will be corrected.

Hey, Mr. Tam – here’s some advice. Have your hourly employees start clocking in. Really.