A handful of members of the Hollywood Critics Association (HCA), including Variety’s senior awards editor Clayton Davis and two other Variety journalists, have resigned from the fledgling awards body over the ouster of a critic who raised questions about the group’s financial status, fundraising distribution and operations. — Then he made his complaints public.
A person with knowledge of the resignations told TheWrap that Davis, along with senior artisan editor Jazz Tangcay and red carpet reporter Angelique Jackson, have resigned from the HCA. Kristen Lopez, television editor for IndieWire, also announced on Twitter that she has resigned from the group.
The dispute has created a rift both inside and outside the HCA, which evolved from the Los Angeles Online Film Critics Society. The organization, which now has more than 100 members, was created in 2016 as a place to include bloggers, YouTubers and other multimedia journalists unaffiliated with mainstream media outlets, a group that is organically more diverse than critics’ circles. traditional.
in a statement on Wednesday, the HCA said now-former member Shannon McGrew, founder of the horror fanzine nightmare spells, had “expressed resentment toward the association and its leadership” and demanded answers to a series of questions the member posted on HCA’s private Facebook page. McGrew raised concerns about fundraising and dues allocations, the group’s non-profit status, and their practice of charging for participation in certain award shows (common in Hollywood awards circles).
The statement says that McGrew was not satisfied with the responses and immediately began complaining stridently on social media. The HCA sent a cease and desist letter on August 19 before finally expelling her.
“The HCA leadership worked diligently to defuse the tension and appease the individual,” the HCA wrote. “We provided more information and evidence to refute suggestions of prize-related and financial improprieties, while also creating a publicly accessible FAQ page with input from all members.”
At one point, another member began arguing with McGrew on the Facebook group, raising tensions both there and online.
“We also offered different avenues for direct communication, but each good faith attempt was met with insults, ridicule, and increasingly derogatory, defamatory, and threatening posts,” the HCA continued in its statement. “Sheltering these baseless actions under the premise of ‘simply asking questions in the name of transparency,’ the now-former member waged an aggressive smear campaign apparently aimed at destroying the organization.”
The HCA statement did not name McGrew, who posted online that the statement HCA sent was initially an internal letter. However, he said that he deleted the mention of “the other person involved who was stalking/harassing me.”
“At this point, this is a blatant act of retaliation for speaking out,” McGrew wrote. McGrew did not comment for this article.
“I am the @shannon_mcgrew team on this one. Whatever’s going on at the HCA sounds more like the kind of drama I expect from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association,” critic Eric Vespe wrote in a blog post. cheep. “Sending legal threats to a former member because he made you look bad is not a good look y’all.”
The Hollywood Critics Association held its second annual HCA TV Awards on August 14. The group also held their fifth annual HCA Film Awards this year. The group is a nonprofit organization in California, but as stated on its website, the HCA at the federal level is not a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation nor is it tax-exempt and its nonprofit status. for-profit is still pending as of August 22.
However, the HCA did get its share of support from members, who noted its inclusive foundation and subsequent diversity: