As the city’s tabloids make hay over the Daily News’s Scratch-‘n’-Match contest fiasco, Council Member Charles Barron has pledged to “go to war” if the paper does not make sufficient amends to the thousands claiming they’ve been cheated out of millions of dollars in prize money.

“They’re preying on people of color, to disrespect us,” Mr. Barron said, adding that most of the game’s participants were minorities. “I’m certain that if they added up all the money that people of color gave to this game, they’d come up with much more than $1 million,” Mr. Barron added.

The Daily News announced yesterday that it will run a special drawing – offering cash prizes totaling $1 million – for readers who believed they had won in the tabloid’s weekly lottery-style promotional game. Saturday’s paper erroneously identified the week’s winning numbers, and several readers who thought they had winning tickets – one man had six, worth $100,000 apiece – were crushed upon learning they had not in fact become instantly wealthy.

Because the new drawing is a game of chance, however, most of the irate Daily News readers holding almost-winning tickets will end up with nothing to show for their brief brush with affluence.

To Mr. Barron, a Democrat of Brooklyn, this solution is “unacceptable.”

The councilman is helping to organize the “Meet the Match” Coalition of outraged game participants, some of whom contacted him yesterday to solicit his help in securing some part of their anticipated winnings. Their mission, Mr. Barron said, is to get the Daily News to stop the game, and to increase the payout to those affected by the misprint.

A spokesman for the Daily News, Eileen Murphy, said that it was impossible to determine the exact revenues generated by the game. While the circulation of the Sunday Daily News had increased by 9.8% in the year since Scratch-‘n’-Match had been restored to the tabloid, she said the Sunday paper had undergone several reforms, and said the circulation spike could not be attributed to any individual change.

In addition to a meeting with the Daily News, Mr. Barron said he and the coalition are also seeking a discourse with some of the tabloid’s major advertisers, especially Macy’s, to ask them to “support us in demanding they treat us with respect.”

If the Daily News denies Mr. Barron’s requests for meetings, he said, “Then we’re going to go to war on this. This is ridiculous. “He said that demonstrations in front of the Daily News building, boycotts of the Sunday Daily News, and acts of civil disobedience to stop the tabloid’s delivery trucks might result from noncompliance with the coalition’s demands. Mr. Barron said the coalition was trying to “fire up” the victims of the mistake “to do the right thing.”

The councilman and his allies aren’t the only ones who seem to be “fired up” by the Daily News’s error. The tabloid’s rival, the New York Post, has spilled great volumes of ink over what it calls the “Scratch ‘n’ Stiff scandal.” Yesterday, in response to the Daily News’s announcement of the $1 million consolation drawing, the Post devoted most of its front page and a two-page inside spread to a story on “Un’Match’ed Ineptness.” It poked fun at the Daily News fiasco in an editorial cartoon and the entirety of its letters section. A Post editorial labeled Daily News editorial director Martin Dunn a “dunce,” and called for the erring tabloid’s publisher, Mortimer Zuckerman, to “pay up. In full.”

While the Post’s schadenfreude and the Daily News’s rejoinders may “add a little color” to the city’s news environment over the next few days, “a week from now it’ll be old news,” said a press economist, Miles Groves.

Mr. Groves, who was an economist for the Newspaper Association of America before starting his own firm, said both the contest gaffe and the tabloid tit-fortat will ultimately be much ado about nothing. While promotional games are useful in procuring the “impulse buys” important to papers that rely on single copy, as opposed to subscriber, circulation – the case for many New York papers, Mr. Groves said – “I would not look at these promotions as driving long-term loyal readers,” the economist added. And as long as the Daily News makes a good faith effort to address its error, Mr. Groves said, most readers will understand, and the Scratch-‘n’-Match game will continue to “be a useful tool for circulation, and it will help them going forward.”

While the Daily News may avoid any long-term fallout over its slip-up, the mistake could have a lasting impact on compulsive gamblers, according to those experienced with the effects of gambling – including lotteries, bingos, and sweepstakes.

The executive director of the New York Council on Problem Gambling, James Maney, said that compulsive gamblers who participate religiously in these types of games might be “crazed” upon learning that they had not actually won several hundred thousand dollars. The executive director of New Jersey’s Council on Compulsive Gambling, Edward Looney, said the disappointment might even provoke acts of violence. “There’s going to be a tremendous amount of resentment because of this,” Mr. Looney said. If people who were relying on their winnings to help them out of significant debt or other financial problems don’t have that resentment addressed, he added, “they’re going to take it out someplace else.” Mr. Looney, who is also a certified gambling counselor, said the Daily News’s error could provoke physical and emotional problems among the disappointed Scratch-‘n’-Match participants.

Ms. Murphy said that the paper did not think the Scratch-‘n’-Match ordeal would end up damaging its credibility or readership. “We believe we have a strong relationship with the readers of the paper. They’re reasonable, they understand that mistakes like this happen.” While the Daily News faithful were “disappointed,” Ms. Murphy said, “by and large we see they’ve been understanding” of the situation.