Tomorrow Apple Inc. announces their Mac Tablet Netbook Thingy — well, that or Steve Jobs sends Phil Schiller on stage to announce: “Made you look!” — and today the New York Times is reporting on Jobs’ vision for the tablet’s probable content partnerships with traditional media companies:
For now, at least, the technology and media industries are looking at the brighter side. “Steve believes in old media companies and wants them to do well,” said a person who has seen the device and is familiar with Apple’s marketing plan for it, but who did not want to be named because talking about it might alienate him from the company. “He believes democracy is hinged on a free press and that depends on there being a professional press.”
Call me cynical, but I have a difficult time seeing Steve Jobs wax philosophical about democracy and the free press. This is, after all, a man who is famous for bullying and stonewalling the press. (Not that these attitudes are fundamentally incompatible, but they do look funny next to each other.) No, I think this sounds more like, I don’t know, maybe New York Times executive editor Bill Keller. You’ll remember him, he’s the one who appeared to let slip something he wasn’t supposed to let on that he knew about last year:
I’m hoping we can get the newsroom more actively involved in the challenge of delivering our best journalism in the form of Times Reader, iPhone apps, WAP, or the impending Apple slate, or whatever comes after that.
Yes, that “democracy” quote sounds a lot more like a particular someone I can think of who would not want to be named because talking about Apple’s new product because it might alienate him from the company.
