Category: News || By

Nameless critics in Web chat rooms are "cruds" who hide behind the "black curtain" of Internet anonymity because they're too cowardly to make their attacks public, Councilman Darryl Segina said Wednesday night.

The broadside at council's September business meeting seemed to be not-too-subtly aimed at Councilman Paul Shelly Jr., a frequent critic of other city officials on his own website and on the Topix.com Internet message forum.

Shelly has also been accused by Topix.com readers of posting some of the comments himself using several different names --- a charge he has publicly denied.

. . .

Topix.com is a so-called "news aggregator" that generates no original coverage of its own, but scoops headlines from other websites and sorts them according to zip codes.

Although Topix originally started out as an independent, "open source" project, since 2005 it has been 75 percent owned by three of the nation's largest newspaper publishing companies: The McClatchy Company, Tribune Company and Gannett.

Each zip code also includes an unmoderated message forum where posters may make anonymous comments.

. . .

In a May 2009 article, Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times reported that Topix.com is now the third most popular "news" website in the U.S.

But Steinberg pointed out that on Topix.com, unsourced rumors and press releases are mingled together with real news stories.

Topix's CEO, Chris Tolles, told Steinberg that the website has "no credibility, prima facie" on any story.

"Rumor and unsubstantiated information is interesting," Tolles said. "I want to know lies, I want to know rumors and innuendo. Just because it's written down doesn't make it true."

. . .

Tolles told Steinberg, "gossip is definitely the engine and the driver of what people are talking about" on Topix.

But four weeks ago, that unfiltered gossip landed Topix in court in Texas, where the subjects of a series of anonymous attacks sued the website, demanding the identities of people writing libelous comments.

. . .

Others have criticized Topix for burying legitimate news under anonymous comments and irrelevant stories from other communities.

"If you like high school sports and things that don't relate to Edinboro at all, then maybe (Topix) is the site for you," wrote a contributor to the YourBoro website, based in Edinboro, Pa., under the headline "Topix.com --- Useless or completely useless?"

(Ironically, YourBoro's editors are --- like most of the posters on Topix --- anonymous.)

. . .

A columnist at a West Virginia newspaper, the Williamson Daily News, in April editorialized that although comments on Topix are protected free speech, they also enable "monstrous smear campaigns ... hurting not only the victims but also destroying our sense of trust."

"What happens when rumors about you or someone you love are posted on the Internet by an anonymous source for the whole world to see?" she wrote.

"Behind the screen of anonymity, some cowards are using Topix and other such sites, to selfishly satisfy personal vendettas with no fear of consequences."

. . .

The McKeesport Topix forum has been a churning series of attacks and counter-attacks --- some of them laced with racial slurs --- against both individual residents and elected officials.

Segina found a series of anonymous posts accusing city employees and officials of skimming money from International Village particularly obnoxious.

He said he was accosted during the three-day event in Renzie Park by a friend who was angry over what he had read.

"I don't think they understand what they're doing when they make these remarks --- always anonymously, never signing their names," Segina said. "They are tarnishing people's reputations with these slanders and innuendos."

. . .

He compared the attacks to those in an anonymous newspaper --- The Mon Valley Voice --- that circulated briefly more than a decade ago.

"I'm going to say this to every one of them --- they are cruds," Segina said.

The online slime-fest over International Village provided a small, bitter footnote to Segina's last year overseeing the folk music and ethnic food festival, which marked its 50th year in August.

Segina is retiring as chairman after 16 years.

. . .

That prompted one of the few lighthearted moments in an otherwise tense meeting, as Council President Regis McLaughlin asked Segina if he'd reconsider.

"Take a year to sit down and think about it," McLaughlin said to Segina, "and then maybe come back. After all, if Brett Favre can do it, maybe (you) can do it."