Casino-hating Philly Paper Now Taking Bets

Now that the fine folks at the Philadelphia Inquirer have done their part to run the world's most respected casino developer out of town and create a toxic environment for anyone even considering opening a gaming establishment in the city of Brotherly Love, what are they doing for an encore?

You'll never believe it.

They're opening up their own casino. Online.

Really.

According to the journalism trade publication Editor & Publisher, the newspaper's website, Philly.Com, is the first in the nation to offer online sports betting. From E&P:

In a partnership with FanDuel, a British online betting company, visitors to Philly.com Instant Fantasy Games can play and win in one-day online fantasy sports games that pay off in real money.

Bettors pick a team from players in scheduled Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association or National Hockey League games that day. If their team wins the fantasy contest, Philly.com says, there are "instant cash prizes -- win tonight!" Users pay a $5 entry fee for each game and can win as much as $90 a game.

Online gambling is illegal in the United States, but there is an exception for fantasy sports. The difference in the FanDuel partnership is that the fantasy team, rather than performing over the season of a sport, can be assembled for just a single day.

"Thanks to the fantasy sports carve out in the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act, these instant fantasy games are legal in the U.S. -- something that the FanDuel team has been very careful to adhere to," FanDuel said in its announcement of the partnership.

"FanDuel and its partners generate revenue from taking a commission on each game."

[snip]

"With the much publicized downturn in advertising revenues, could these games, at least in part, save the newspaper industry?" the press release asked.

According to FanDuel, U.K. newspapers are generating "millions of dollars in online revenue" from betting and paid games. With sports betting legal in Britain, newspapers are able to offer more lucrative betting possibilities.

FanDuel claims some players are winning more than $16,000 in a month.

I'm in awe. The very same newspaper that attacked its politicians for attempting to plug budget holes with legalized gambling now wants to using a loophole in the online gaming law to overcome its own dwindling revenues?


These are the same folks who, only two days ago, cackled over Wynn's retreat and declared this:

Making it easier and legal to bet on sports will only create more problem gamblers. It could also undermine the credibility of the games. (See the Chicago Black Sox and other betting scandals involving athletes.)

Right. So the Philadelphia Inquirer says building a brick-and-mortar casino that would create actual jobs and that would take effort for adults to visit would be a scourge on the city. But the Philadelphia Inquirer thinks it's good to go up with a website where people can place bets without getting dressed and on which there's really way of telling whether the gambler is of age or not.

Congrats, Mr. Wynn. You got out of this funhouse just in time.

Also, how is it the Review-Journal hasn't done this yet? Who would you feel better about placing an online bet with, some casino-hating Philly newspaper or a paper with a legitimate claim to the gambling brand known around the world, Las Vegas?

Of course, I know why the R-J's not in on it. Hell, their Online Guy seems to believe today is the first time an advertisement has ever been Tweeted. No, really. This is what he wrote today:

Every day there are roughly 50 million tweets zipping through cyberspace. Until today, none of them were paid ads.

Yes, Twitter's new promoted Tweets thing started today, but had Al Gibes paid any attention (attended?) BlogWorld right here in Vegas last October, he would've known that popular individuals have been taking money for sponsored Tweets for so long that the FTC put out rules about it.

But I digress. It doesn't surprise anyone (anymore) that the R-J's Web operation is run by total incompetents. But it should stun us all that the Philadelphia newspaper jump head first into the very depraved, predatory, evil racket that it has spent years attacking.

More from E&P:

FanDuel said "Philly.com is proving to be a true pioneer by becoming the first online news publication to use the power of daily fantasy sports games to open up a new revenue frontier."

Yeah. That's what they wanted to be known for.

This Was NOT My Fault. Rats.

The Wynn folks just called off their effort to get a license and build in Philadelphia. I've been accused via text and email from friends of being a bit of an instigator given that the publication of the above image -- I'm using it now that (a) it's over and (b) everyone else has -- was the first big public problem between Steve Wynn and the Pennsylvania Gaming Commission.

So I just asked Jennifer Dunne, the corporate spokeswoman. "No, this has absolutely nothing to do with that." Then she referred me back to the corporate statement from Steve Wynn:

"We are fascinated by the legalization of full gaming in Pennsylvania and stimulated by the opportunity that it presents for Wynn Resorts, but this particular project did not, in the end, present an opportunity that was appropriate for our company."

Wow. Philadelphia had a chance to put Atlantic City out of business once and for all with perhaps the most respected gaming operator and casino-resort designer in history and fouled it up. I'm sure the drama about my posting that image didn't help and maybe that was at least the start of Team Wynn realizing that the PA gang are a bit unstable and whiny. Given that the New Jersey board is doing everything it can to destroy its gaming business, that's a hard act to show up. This is like the Republicans screwing themselves six ways to Friday and allowing the Democrats to somehow revive their brand in time for November.

The Philadelphia press and Stiffs & Georges blogger David McKee are likely to write post-mortems that involve Wynn's ignorance of the development history of the neighborhood where the casino was to stand. But that's a red herring here; the conflict between the state gaming board, which chose a site, and the city, which feels trampled upon, is not the fault of any potential casino operator there. It's an internecine political drama. If it became Wynn's problem, shame on the two governmental bodies who scotched the deal.

Maybe this is why, as McGee picked up on recently, Wynn was sighted in Atlantic City kicking some tires recently? Seriously, would not a Wynn Atlantic City make you want to give that loserville another shot?

[See RateVegas.Com's blog on the topic, too. And David McKee proves me wrong just for the fun of it.]

The show is UP: Wynnterview Time

Here's this week's show! Beyond the chat with Mr. Wynn, it's unusual for the fact that Miles is the one offering up a lot of on-the-Strip experiences and views. So enjoy. Oh! And the first 10 listeners to email asking can have codes for the new VegasMate application for the iPad. Click on the date below to make it play or right-click to save it and listen at your leisure. You can subscribe, too, (it's free!) in iTunes or in Zune.

April 4: Wynnterview, The Podcast

It’s become a cliché on this program to say that when our Steve sits down to chat with Steve Wynn, you never quite know what’s going to happen. But it’s a cliché because it’s true, so fasten your seatbelts and get ready for a wild ride as the Steves pick over the Wynn divorce, recent art acquisitions and a spirited political discussion over the economy and health care.

In Banter: Miles – yes, Miles – goes on a Strip bender, the R-J thinks Pink’s is literally BEST, Frank Gehry thinks Excalibur is literally the BEST, Illinois and NJ think Macau is the WORST and much more.

Links to stuff discussed:

Ben Spillman’s work at the R-J and his site, NevadaOutdoorNews.Com
Food scribe Max Jacobson on the Jazz Brunch at the Wynn
The Asian Equation recipe on VegasHappensHere.Com
RateVegas.Com’s Hunter Hillegas is a famous iPad geek now
The VegasHappensHere.Com drama re: Wynn, Philly and a photo
Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Best of Las Vegas results
News of the Social House move from TI to the Crystals from the Sun
David McKee of Stiffs & Georges on the Macau-Vegas drama and the food critics’ big new book
The R-J breaks the story of the prostitude’s retirement to porn
Photos from the visit to Steve Wynn for this week’s interview
Steve’s Las Vegas Weekly column on the Wynn divorce
Link to a story about another billionaire divorce that seemed good and went south

Does Jennifer Lin Regret The Error?

UPDATE #2: The paper ran this correction today, but the online version remains incorrect and the correction is not even appended to it.


This is Jennifer Lin, reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, with Steve Wynn. We'll get back to them in a second. But first, a little story.

Years ago, I taught one semester of journalism at UNLV. For the final, I took my students to meet wine expert Andrew Bradbury at Mandalay Bay and had my students, few of whom were legitimately literate, interview him. He was the owner of a cool wine shop called 55 Degrees and wine director at the Charlie Palmer restaurant Aureole. I gave my students a cheat sheet of information and warned them that anyone who misspelled Aureole would automatically flunk.

None of them did, but I got seven different spellings for "Andrew Bradbury." I gave up teaching.

I tell this tale because today I learned that it's not just nearly illiterate Nevada college students who are careless even when information is handed to them on a silver platter. A piece today by Lin in the Philadelphia Inquirer about Steve Wynn's plans for Philadelphia includes this passage:

During an interview last week, Steve Wynn, the company's chairman, showed sketches of his vision for the Philadelphia casino to a Las Vegas blogger, Steve Freiss. Freiss took a photograph of one of the drawings and posted it on his Web site, www.WhatHappensHere.com.

Freiss wrote that Wynn "watched me shoot the photo," but later told him to remove the image from his blog because of a "gross misunderstanding."

See a few errors in there?

I am utterly astonished. No, really. I didn't think you could get to be a staffer for a paper with that sort of fine reputation and make such a show of being so sloppy. I get that sometimes my name gets misspelled; it's even happened to my in bylines in The New York Times. But she didn't just screw that up, she invented a whole new website. I mean, you're here at this site. So was she. Look up. It's right there in big letters. With my name. She couldn't have emailed me in the first place, in fact, if she had misspelled it.

What's also interesting is that Lin chased me for two days to get a contextual remark about what happened with that casino photo. As I am also a working journalist endeavoring to gather information for my own stories, I was a little hard to reach, and ultimately early yesterday afternoon I provided her with this e-mailed statement:

Mr. Wynn laid out several renderings for me to see and pointed out certain design features but specified the one I ended up shooting as the most accurate. He stood by me as I shot the image with my iPhone. The image was posted for five days before his office raised concerns and Mr. Wynn himself then called me to ask me to take it down. We did not speak -- I missed his call as I was on an assignment -- but his assistant said he was apologetic and that there had been a 'gross misunderstanding.' I acceded to his request because I recognized the possibility that Mr. Wynn, who suffers from a degenerative eye disease, did not realize I was using the phone to take a photo. Either way, though, he showed me the rendering, knew we were on the record and never suggested I could not describe what I was seeing or that there was a timetable that was sensitive.

All she ended up doing was quoting what I wrote in an update to the original Philadelphia post on this blog. Now, I'm no nationally published journalist -- oh, wait, I am! -- but I usually prefer to use actual comments I obtain from the actual source if that's at all possible. It makes me seem, oh I dunno, like I've done some new reporting. Which she did!

There is another way to do this. Don't take my word for it, though. Read all about it. Journalist Kellie Patrick Gates, with whom I worked a decade ago at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, talked to me on Monday and wrote a piece for PlanPhilly.Com on essentially the same thing. Here's my part of that one:

Friess said in a phone interview Monday evening that Wynn brought a group of renderings to lunch. "When I asked if I could keep them, he said no," Friess said. "But he pulled out one of them, and he stood by while I took a photograph of it. It was my understanding that image was for my use as a journalist. Mr. Wynn now says it was a misunderstanding."

Monday evening, Friess removed the image at Wynn's request and updated his post with an explanation of why he did so.

The image shows a white building with many columns. A large glass bubble on the top suggests an atrium. "During our interview, he laid out photographs of the podium of the Encore property in Macau next to renderings of the Philadelphia property and made note of very specific design similarities between the two," Friess said. Wynn told the gaming control board in early March that he planned to draw on his new Macau property for the Foxwoods design.

This whole thing is a pain in my ass and I really didn't want to discuss it very much. Evidently, even showing me the renderings caused Wynn a great deal of headache with the Pennsylvania gaming authorities. Had he instructed me that there was an embargo on the material, I would have agreed to adhere to it.

It may seem strange journalistically that I'd allow myself to be bullied by Wynn, but I acceded to Wynn's request to remove the image for a number of reasons. First, I felt that it was vaguely possible he didn't realize that my iPhone was a camera. Second, Philadelphia is a big story back East but Steve Wynn is a far more important source to me on many other topics. Third, it had been up long enough for my core readership to see it and for many others to copy it for their own sites. And fourth, to refuse to do so could've invited litigation and God knows I can't afford that over something this insignificant to me.

I have answered journalists' questions on this and explained my decision on this site because I believe in transparency and because I would want other journalists to respond to me if I had such reasonable questions.

Look, I'm far from perfect. I make careless errors in stories, too. Everyone does. Usually, though, I get names right because that's just so fundamental. And the thing about Lin is that the entirety of the messy passage suggests a broader problem. These actually were difficult errors to make.

What's more, Lin is front and center of a YouTube video called "Steve Wynn Reveals Shocking Ignorance" -- she called it "infamous" despite the fact that my nephew's Dum Dum The Lollipop video has about as many views -- in which she catches Steve Wynn seemingly not in command of the historic facts surrounding the region of Philadelphia he is developing. Watch:

The fact is, the drama of the Philly casino is really an internecine dispute between the state, which decided that's a good place for one, and the city, which feels its authority has been usurped. That's a good one and it may become Wynn's problem, but it's not Wynn's fault. If he's a little fuzzy over the development history there, so what? He knows he's in the process of getting a license. I suspect he would happily have had the thing somewhere other than along a row with a Wal-Mart and an IKEA. But he decided to go for this opportunity; it's not like he ever lobbied anyone to put it there.

I digress, but only because I just find the Philly media's overall efforts quite weird and misfocused. And now I know that the lead print reporter covering this for the largest paper in the market isn't terribly interested in being accurate about little things.

I shot Lin an email a little while ago. The subject line was "disturbing" and the contents of it were: "You not only misspelled my last name but fabricated my website. It's VegasHappensHere.Com. What the hell?"

Let's see how/if she responds.

UPDATE: Lin left a voice message acknowledging the name misspelling but baffling over the website mistake. She seemed unaware that she wrote "WhatHappensHere.Com" instead of "VegasHappensHere.Com," repeatedly saying she didn't understand what she'd done incorrectly on that front. Congrats, LVCVA, your slogan has actually brainwashed Americans into subliminally replacing the word "Vegas" for "What." Lin also indicated she'd run a correction tomorrow on my name. Apparently fixing it on the Web immediately didn't occur to her. That's the first and fastest thing I do to make amends when I screw up. Oh well.