Tim Ryan, tryan@wolfrivermedia.com
A photoshopped image of Shawano Mayor Lorna Marquardt in a Nazi uniform has been greeting web surfers over the past few days who browse for Shawano on the Google search engine.
The image appears alongside a map of the city of Shawano in Google’s search results, which also lists a number of other Shawano area links, including the Shawano Country Chamber of Commerce, Shawano School District and the city’s official web site.
The image appears to have originated from an August 2011 blog post on wordpress.com written by Naomi Isaacson, CEO of Samanta Roy Institute of Science and Technology.
Attempts to reach a representative at Google for an explanation of why the image was suddenly popping at the top of Shawano web searches were unsuccessful.
Marquardt declined to comment.
City Administrator Brian Knapp also had no comment other than to say that steps were being taken to contact Google and have the image taken down.
“City staff is looking into it,” he said.
SIST representatives could not be reached for a comment.