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CoolCleveland publisher apologizes after 'appalling' post about Townhall Gingerbread event

The post took aim at the city's foreclosure crisis and the 'Miracle of Cleveland' rescue

The publisher of CoolCleveland has issued a formal apology after a controversial post appeared on its website and social media on Monday.

The article and Facebook post, which has now been deleted, was referencing an upcoming Gingerbread House Building event at Townhall on Thursday night. An attempt at humor seems to have missed the mark: 

Credit: Facebook

The 'three missing gingerbread women' sentence referenced the story of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight, who were held captive and tortured by Ariel Castro until their escape five years ago. 

Kayla Barnes, communications director for TownHall tells WKYC: "We are appalled by the article written by Cool Cleveland. We had no prior knowledge of the article, nor did we approve the article in any way.  The moment we saw the post, I personally called Cool Cleveland to express the inappropriateness and requested it be taken down immediately."

Before the post was removed, several Facebook users expressed their outrage: 

Credit: Facebook
Credit: Facebook

The problem of Cleveland's blighted houses has resurfaced in recent days as the house that Alianna DeFreeze was murdered in is set to be torn down later this week. 

UPDATE: On Monday evening, CoolCleveland's publisher Thomas Mulready issued the following apology on their site and on social media: 

On behalf of CoolCleveland, our writers, staff and contributors, I personally apologize for the inexcusable and inappropriate post earlier today that attempted to promote an event with a poor attempt at humor.

It is never OK to make light of such serious issues, and I take full and personal responsibility for this post ever being published.

We apologize to anyone who may have read this egregious post, to victims and survivors, and to the community of Cleveland. When we started CoolCleveland over 16 years ago, it was to help and support the cool events, cool people and cool venues in our region, not to cause further harm and pain.

We want to make it clear that Townhall is not responsible for any content in the post, and we sincerely apologize to the people involved with Townhall for associating them with this language and sentiment. We have personally apologized to the management at Townhall and are working with them to ensure that they are not further harmed by this post.

We are committed to doing everything in our power to help right this wrong, although we realize that words have power, and we have violated a trust with our readers and community. We have made a contribution to a non-profit organization that helps survivors and victims, and we are making arrangements for training for our writers, staff and contributors.

However, I want to reiterate that full responsibility for this issue rests on my shoulders personally. We have made immediate changes to our staffing. Although we had installed safeguards to ensure content review, we have now instituted a more rigorous internal system to ensure that all content published by CoolCleveland meets our standards and continues to help the community and promote the coolness all around us. Because this community is cool.

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