It’s been difficult to keep track of the many technologies that have emerged over the past ten years claiming to be “the future of the newspaper.” From RSS feeds to user-submitted content aggregators, it’s been abundantly clear since the mid-90s that the Web was where news would live in the future, but what shape it would ultimately take has been a lingering mystery, especially as readers have abandoned once-popular publications’ print and Internet-based outlets. The New York Times, USA Today,  The Washington Post and nearly all of the other publications that make up the Audit Bureau of Circulation’s top 25 newspapers saw their circulation drop between 3% and 11% between September 2009 and September 2010, and that includes electronic subscriptions to those outlets. If print is dead and websites aren’t the place that newspapers will survive, maybe the question is not what is the future of the newspaper but does it have a future at all?

Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) wunderkind the iPad and the incoming flood of high-end tablet PCs will likely determine the fate of the newspaper over the coming years. The portability of tablet PCs gives them the same convenience of newsprint while the technology powering them — namely the touch-screen interface, persistent Web connection via 3G standards and WiFi, and their capacity to marry the best of print and Web formats on-screen — conspire to make reading the newspaper an attractive proposition to audiences again, which in turn makes newspapers attractive to advertisers again. Still unknown, however, is what model will work best on the tablet platform. Publishers like Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) have had trouble bringing devoted app versions of their print publications to the iPad over disagreements with Apple’s high-percentage take of each sale in the iTunes store, which is why news aggregators seem to be making the jump from laptop and desktop Web browser-based popularity to tablet.

Late last week, startup iPad aggregator app company Flipboard announced that it  has signed partnership deals with eight media outlets to bring full articles from their publications to the app. Among those partners are ABC News (NYSE: DIS), Condé Nast, The Washington Post (NYSE: WPO) and News Corp.’s (NYSE: NWS) Wall Street Journal tech blog All Things Digital. Up to now, Flipboard’s content has been similar to any number of news aggregator websites: It offers a string of headlines followed by two-sentence excerpts that link to the source’s official websites popping up when the app is launched. Now articles provided by these new partners will not only appear in full, but will be automatically converted to a glossy HTML 5 version generated by Flipbook. The HTML 5 versions of the articles will have attractive, large images, enlarged pull quotes, and, most importantly, two full-page, magazine-style ads incorporated into the text. As Flipboard chief executive officer Mike McCue says, the app will make these print outlets’ content easier to read and more attractive to tablet users but also “ultimately more monetizable.”

The Washington Post‘s managing editor Raju Narisetti, however, says that the new partnership with Flipboard is “just an experiment.” The Post is hosting Sunday edition content on Flipboard that it doesn’t include in its own devoted app on the iPad, an app that is likely to change its distribution model in the immediate future depending on just what Apple announces this week. Rumors from the past two months have indicated that Apple will be announcing a new subscription pay model for apps at a media event this Thursday. The new pay model is expected to precede a massive new push for devoted news publications on the handheld, with the Apple and News Corp. co-developed pub The Daily. Depending on The Daily‘s form and success, the devoted paper may see new life on tablets foregoing aggregators like Flipboard entirely.

Aggregator or devoted paper, the future of newspapers is clearer than it has been for a decade. Investors desperate for ad revenue and readership to rise in the news print industry have much to be hopeful about in 2011. News Corp. shareholders are advised to brace themselves for a particularly exciting week.

As of this writing, Anthony Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here.