Bill Keller: Apple Tablet ‘impending’

Bill Keller may have casually mentioned that Apple’s not-officially-happening-but-clearly-happening tablet computer is imminent and that the New York Times are working to bring content to it.

Earlier this year a stealth team from the newspaper was rumoured, along with magazine and textbook publishers, to have met with some of Steve Jobs’ representatives.

Last week the Keller gave a speech that was apparently supposed to be off the record, but that was posted by the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard. He said that he now reads the Times online himself and some other stuff that can best be summed up with: pay versus free, integration, more efforts by the print side, why can’t we all just get along:

But then, at about 8:30 in the video, he includes the Apple tablet as part of a specific list of platforms they’re working on bringing Times content to, saying:

“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…”

Maybe he just reads other tech-related parts of the internets, as well as the Times, believes the rumours and doesn’t know anything we don’t. But if the paper of record is engaged with Apple in developing the saviour of journalism it seems hard to believe no-one would have informed the boss.