The Tribune Co. may develop their own tablet

Newspapers are a dying bread, but the tablets could save them. Developing applications for Android and Apple doesn’t seem to be enough for the Tribune Co, one of the largest U.S. news enterprises. They are working on a tablet to offer to subscribers.
The Tribune Co. owns many major newspapers like, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and the Baltimore Sun, along with 23 television stations.
The tablet is expected to a run a modified version of Android along with software for the owner’s hometown paper. They could offer the tablet for free to customers who agree to extended subscriptions to one of its papers. This is no different then what the carriers offer, but the Tribune might also partner with a carrier to help subsidize costs.
There is no word on who will manufacture the tablet, but they supposedly have talked to Samsung and others not named. This project has proved to be difficult as they were hoping to begin testing by mid-August which won’t happen.
I think this is a great idea. The newspapers need to do something if they want to stick around, but this is not their specialty. I think developing their own doesn’t make sense. Why not partner with one of the manufacturers and offer and existing tablet that is already in the market like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1? Companies like the Tribune are not in the technology business, they are in the news business.