And yet that’s exactly what we’ve been told in much of the coverage surrounding last weekend’s launch of the iPad. Report after report, sporting quotes from media industry insiders about how this device might allow them to do exactly what they were doing before, albeit on an LCD. Recreate print layouts on screen. Reconstruct payment models of old.

While Steve Jobs & Company have given every indication their interest is in tinkering with a new computing platform, I’d say a solid two-thirds of the coverage I’ve seen/read/heard has instead focused on this other notion. That of the iPad as Old Media Savior, regardless of the fact that’s never been a talking point put forth by Apple. It’s a dead horse news outlets simply won’t stop flogging, and has crowded out a lot of smarter, more insightful coverage. Where’d this idea come from, and why is it getting so much play?

First, head on over to The Atlantic and check out Lane Wallace’s The Bias of Veteran Journalists. It’s a plainspoken exploration (that may or may not have been inspired by this particular news event). Then couple Wallace’s analysis with the industry backstory and you have something of an answer. It’s hardly satisfying, but there it is. The people charged with covering these events are the selfsame ones participating daily in an industry under withering fire. This informs their viewpoint before they even step into the room, and predisposes them to sometimes connecting the dots to where they don’t necessarily go—to solutions they themselves have been searching for, but no one else intended.

Yesterday, Wired’s Gadget Lab blog posted a speculative piece asserting that, in the wake of recent App Store takedowns, news organizations might want to take a cautionary approach when creating applications for the iPad, lest they unwittingly submit to potential censorship from Apple.

Trouble is, the post is shot through with the bizarro, “Tablets are the end of history!” assumptions that have gripped news organizations (and the publishing industry in general) since well before the iPad was even unveiled.

Where did we get this myopic assumption that in order to participate in the “iPad universe” newsrooms must author their own native applications? There’s already a phenomenal, censorship-free way to reach this new potential iPad audience: It’s called a website. (You know, that place where news venues already have millions upon millions of readers, most of whom they seem not to know what to do with.)

Beyond the haptic feedback bits, there is precious little in the iPad news app demos we’ve been seeing that can not be done in a Web browser, right now. Yes, really. But because this new gadget vaguely apes a form factor some folks are familiar with (“Hey, it’s shaped like a magazine now!”) the universe has suddenly been reinvented and all the rules have changed? Poppycock.

Don’t want Apple (or Amazon, or Sony, or whoever) controlling your delivery channel?

Then put some of that money into creating new and innovative features for your website, where it should have been all along.

Addendum

In a mildly amusing but important aside, I’ll mention that much of the Wired post is a complete non sequitur because news organizations have already been making apps for the App Store for some time now—for the iPhone—with nary a hint of the aforementioned censorship boogeyman. Just because the screen got bigger doesn’t mean the landscape shifted.