I went to a press conference Monday morning with hundreds of slobbering tech journalists for a buzzy product announcement. For weeks, the blogosphere had been hashing through rumors and leaked screenshots of what this next device might look like, what its feature set might be, and what it might mean for its parent company’s overall business model. The CEO unveiling the gadget was wearing jeans and delivered a lofty, off-the-cuff speech to hype the audience about the new device. The product’s parent company is coming off impressive profit numbers last quarter, despite a downturn among its competitors. Once the gadget was unveiled, the press reviewed it favorably, despite only minor improvements, almost as though they were trying to will it to success.

If I had told you all this a year ago, you would have thought I'd gone to an Apple event. And on Monday morning, there were times when I could have sworn I was hanging out with Apple. But I wasn’t. I was with Amazon, at its press conference announcing the Kindle 2.

Watch a TBM video dispatch from the press conference below.

The new Kindle does the same thing its ancestor did—display electronic books and other text. You download books from Amazon’s store, and they’re delivered wirelessly to your Kindle. Amazon takes a cut of sales from the device and the e-book, creating a new revenue source for the company. Don’t be ashamed if you didn’t know all this already; you’re probably one of the 299.5 million people in this country who doesn’t own a Kindle.

Some tech-porn measurements we should dispense up front: The new Kindle is 0.36 inches thin, about 50 percent the thickness of its obese 0.7 inch predecessor. Aiming for nuance, the device can now show 16 stunning shades of gray rather than just four. It is 10.2 ounces light and can read books aloud in that sing-songy robot voice we all love so much. Finally, it has a 2 gigabyte hard drive, good for storing 1,500 books. We’ll dub this the Michiko Kakutani feature, because who besides the New York Times book critic needs a digitized library in her purse?

I lather on the snark not because I don’t like the Kindle—it’s a very cool and impressive device. I’m overly critical because nobody else seems willing to be.

Tech blogs were predictably breathless for the event. Gizmodo, Engadget, and Silicon Alley Insider gave it the live-blog treatment usually reserved for an Apple event. CrunchGear made a noble attempt to burst the Kindle’s bubble by uploading a video showing the new Kindle doesn’t actually turn its pages faster than the old version, as Amazon claimed. But the post was quickly amended by a CrunchGear editor with the note that the original author was “a little harsh,” and that it was unfair for speed conclusions to be reached from unscientific tests.

The New York Times, meanwhile, launched its Kindle 2 story to its featured front-page slot, with a headline that sounded better suited for a singles Web site: “New Kindle Is Faster, Smarter, Thinner.” Later, they smartly changed it to the more demure: “Amazon in Big Push for New Kindle Model.” PC magazine slugged its piece similarly: “Kindle 2 Slims Down, Adds Muscle—and Talks.” Peter Kafka of All Things Digital, the tech spinoff of the Wall Street Journal, wrote that he was going upstairs to “fondle” a test version of the new Kindle.

Even Stephen King got in on the action, agreeing to write a Kindle-exclusive novella. Featured prominently in King’s novella is—surprise—a Kindle. King says he made the decision to product-place the Kindle himself, without a directive from Amazon. He read a Kindle-heavy section of the novella out loud, and it felt like a translation of Top Chef’s incessant preening for Glad.

All of this love despite not knowing how many Kindles have already been sold—the industry’s guess is about 500,000. That’s not to mention that the new version costs the same amount as the old one—$360.

The press’ love affair is just beginning. Press conference attendees were allowed only limited time with the Kindle. Once the review copies get sent around, reviewers will presumably fall for its new form factor and incrementally improved features, just as it did for the iPod and iPhone. We’ll read pieces about how the Kindle 2 is even more accessible than the last version, which means it’s even more likely to lead the charge into a new, e-book future, just as new versions of the iPod and iPhone did.

The types of articles soon to be written about the Kindle are what prompted my Slate colleague Jack Shafer to write a piece explaining the media’s crush on Apple. But now we have a new question to answer: Why is the press so in love with Amazon?

The answer: Apple.

Remember, Apple was once America’s sexiest corporation. But now things are uncertain. Its iPod product line is getting stale, especially relative to the iPhone franchise (which is growing just as stale). Apple’s CEO is grounded until further notice. Nobody knows when its next line of desktops is going to come out. Apple has receded into the background.

Among the quadrangle of companies Americans care about most (Starbucks, Apple, Google, and Amazon), Apple’s slowdown leaves an opening for another company to emerge as the sexiest company in America. Starbucks has had a rough go of things lately, and Google’s business model now seems to be exclusively about advertising—efficient but not alluring. Into this void steps Amazon, with a device that could create a whole new industry and change the way we live our lives, just like the iPod.

And there’s even more incentive for the media to buzz about the Kindle than the iPod. Many news outlets consider the Kindle to be a potential new source of revenue, since it asks users to pay for newspaper and magazine subscriptions—anywhere from $1.25 to $14.99 a month. (TBM’s sister site, Slate, is among the magazines Kindle users pay to subscribe to for $2.49 a month.) If the Kindle is going to catch on, it needs the media’s help to penetrate the zeitgeist. And if the media are going to reap its revenue rewards, they need to ensure the Kindle is an iPod-level success.

So we’ve found at least one place where the hype for Apple and Amazon differ. The media lavished praise on Apple because Apple lavished parties and juicy stories on them. But this time it’s different. The press is rooting for the Kindle’s success because it’s rooting for its own.