With a big Apple tablet announcement slated for Wednesday, many have speculated about the role of the New York Times in the potentially game-changing launch. Today, the paper has announced the creation of an “e-reader division” to be lead by general manager Yasmin Yamini. Check out the company memo inside!

Back on January 13^th, Valleywag, the Silicon Valley subsidiary of Gawker Media, cut the ribbon on a “scavenger hunt” for information about the Apple Tablet, which led to Apple’s rather predictable response of sending Gawker a cease-and-desist letter. As the rumored release date of the Apple Tablet nears (January 27^th, according to numerous sources), so too, it would seem, does the end of Nick Denton’s mad quest to make Steve Jobs get serious about their relationship and sue him already. It promises to be interesting.

In today’s New York Times, writer Motoko Rich is surprisingly rough on Amazon’s Kindle, bullying the e-reader by analyzing its best-sellers list – and finding that more than half of them are available for free. Ostensibly, the piece is about how publishers are working to spur sales by giving away titles, hoping “that customers who like what they read will go on to obtain another title for money.” But dare we say, this Times piece sounds like it was written by… a blogger.

In the lead-up to the release of the Apple Tablet, publishers like Condé Nast have somewhat tepidly ventured out on their own into the digital marketplace. Both the December and January issues of GQ were released as iPhone apps, becoming the first title to supply digital versions that count toward circulation numbers. Now, Condé Nast has released the first batch of stats and claimed success, but the numbers seem small. Is there hope?

To hear Arthur Sulzberger Jr., tell it in New York Magazine following the Oct. 26 benefit for The News Literacy Project, the “critical flaw” of the RMS Titanic was not iceberg detection, not an inattentive crew, not a shortage of lifeboats, not overestimating the ship’s construction, nor underestimating the staying power of ice. It was [...]

The Nieman Journalism Lab describes itself as “an attempt to help journalism figure out its future in an Internet age.” Apparently, the future of journalism now includes publishing “off-the-record” speeches. Recently they posted a revealing video of NY Times Executive Editor Bill Keller during an “internal chat” with his staffers.

Pretty much everyone – from Politics Daily to BusinessWeek to the LA Times to textbook companies and every techie publication known to man – is anticipating the release of a Kindle-esque Apple tablet, or at least an announcement of it. Perhaps Steve Jobs spoke too soon last year when he told the New York Times that the Kindle would inevitably fail because Americans just don’t read anymore.