It’s finally here: At 1 p.m. Eastern (10 a.m. Pacific) Wednesday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs will walk onto a California stage and — unless a lot of tea leaves have been read spectacularly wrong — announce the new Apple tablet, a device that will save the news industry, the book industry, the magazine industry, and probably the rubber band industry too. At least that’s what some have argued. The truth is probably a little more nuanced.

There’ll be no shortage of coverage of the event, but we’ll be approaching it a little differently: We’ll be liveblogging the tablet’s unveiling from a journalism-centric perspective. We’ll tell you what’s announced as it’s announced (by piggybacking on the live coverage of tech blogs like Gizmodo and Engadget), but we’ll also be covering what it means to journalism and the industries that support it.

I’ve invited some smart commentators to join me (more on that later), and we’d love to get your thoughts throughout the unveiling. So come join us at this URL at 1 p.m. EST (we’ll actually open the doors a little earlier, around 12:30) and figure out for yourself whether the reality has any connection with the hype.