Evil editing

Q: Is there a special part of hell reserved for editors who put the Great Cliches into other people's ledes?
A: Yes.
Q: Is it, you know, hot?
A: Really, really hot.

Just a suggestion for whoever decided to take this less-than-thrilling but pretty adequate lede:*

NBC confirmed Sunday what the television world already knew — that the network would end Jay Leno’s prime-time show in one month and return him to 11:35 p.m., bumping “The Tonight Show” and its host, Conan O’Brien, to 12:05 a.m.

... and turned it into this:

It's official: NBC will end Jay Leno's prime-time show in one month and return him to 11:35p.m., bumping "The Tonight Show" and its host, Conan O'Brien, to 12:05 a.m.

Hard to see why you'd do it to your own prose, but doing it to someone else's -- wow, something wicked this way comes.

In the age of local-local-local, why is a New York Times story from Pasadena about national late-night TV above the fold on 1A? Silly rabbit. National news never really went away; we've still got plenty of sports, television and colorful promos for new film releases on the front, along with the occasional Missing Mom. It's just that annoying policy stuff we got rid of. Make sense now?

* From nytimes.com, but it's also the version at Lexis.