A sustained campaign from scenestr publisher, Howard Duggan, has forced the without-notice resignation of QMusic president Natalie Strijland and Vice-President D-J Wendt with immediate effect.
The resignations were announced at 8am this morning, hours after last night's Management Committee meeting. That meeting considered this organisation's impending third article (in a series of five), the substance of which had been made known to QMusic. The QMusic meeting also considered recent correspondence from a QMusic Member requesting extracts from their Conflict Of Interest register.
Strijland's resignation comes six weeks after we demanded it on 4th June. It comes after 16 months of her failure to respond to all emails from from us – instead sending four deputies to respond and apologise for her "unavailability".
In highly unusual circumstances, QMusic offered no explanation for the resignations and no explanation as to why both leaders elected to hand in their cards at the same time. Both Strijland and Wendt gave no indication of their intentions to stand down at April's annual general meeting, seemingly unware they would be handing in their slips eight weeks later. Our first article damning QMusic's conduct towards this organisation and others dropped six hours before that AGM and was shared widely on social media.
scenestr publisher Howard Duggan. Image © Wade Roberts
QMusic's disastrous responses to our allegations dating back to 2018 – and continuing to present day – have included ignoring our requests for private resolution, dismissing our claims, undertaking a sham investigation, taking an unreasonable time to respond to us, refusing to respond to us, publicly claiming they had responded to us when they hadn't, publicly misrepresenting scenestr's claims, rewriting the historical chain of events – and by extension damaging Duggan's and this organisation's reputation.
Last month, CEO Kris Stewart QMusic appointed crisis PR firm, Sound Story, to 'handle' our public claims.
The two previous scenestr articles were:
Scenestr Publisher Condemns QMusic CEO Kris Stewart and Board over Awarding of Media Contracts
QMusic Members Furious At President Strijland’s Tone Deaf Captains Pick
The third 'bombshell' article is expected to be released in early August. We, Eyeball Media, renew our call for the immediate resignation of Aaron Dahl as detailed in the first article.
Existing board members Vivienne Mellish and John Collins have stepped in to the vacated roles. We have requested an urgent meeting with them to discuss our concerns.
