Sports Betting: Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures

By MAUREEN DOWD, New York Times

Excerpt:

Self-described print press "fanatic" Mortimer Zuckerman, who owns The Daily News and U.S. News & World Report, proposed to Forbes that the federal government could save newspapers by allowing sports betting on newspaper Web sites.

"It would take Congressional legislation and the willingness on the part of the government to confront gambling and casino interests that have blocked this," he said. "Newspaper owners have never gotten together to lobby for this because they have always been quite profitable. Those days are behind us."

I tracked down Zuckerman in Jerusalem on Tuesday to ask him about it. "Newspapers are so critical for public dialogue and holding public officials responsible," he told me. "And who's going to be able to afford original reporting in the next five years? Very, very few."

He said some British newspapers make millions on betting games like Bingo. "People are spending money on what is basically a social vice anyhow," he said. "So why not use it to preserve the First Amendment? It's not a perfect solution, but it is a solution."

Representative Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, introduced a bill to legalize and regulate online gambling. But he told me that he had to exempt sports gambling from the bill to round up enough votes to get it passed.

"Some people apparently believe that betting on games - horror of horrors - does not now happen," Frank said sardonically.

Nick Pileggi, who wrote the books and screenplays for "Goodfellas" and "Casino," sees no downside. "It would be a wonderful, huge blow against organized crime because the money would be taken out of what the mob gets," he said. "And every state has a lottery so nobody from the state is going to stand up and say ‘We're against gambling.' "

He said that if newspapers would stop being so stuffy, they could set up A.T.M.-style machines in lobbies and at newsstands and "take over a business that the mob now does illegally worth $20 to $40 billion a year."