All newspapers redesign their mastheads from time to time, but with the Internet radically reshaping the consumption of news, the International Herald-Tribune (created when the New York Times purchased the late great NY Herald-Tribune) really knows where to focus their efforts:

“Did you see the American flag in the old logo?”

“What American flag are you talking about?” I asked her.

“The American flag that was in the old logo … do you think that without the flag the paper will be more accepted in places that hate us today?”

WHAT????

(Now is the time for you, my dear reader, to scroll to the top of this post and see the old masthead and look at the details of the old logo, because I am 100 percent sure that you never paid any attention to, yes, the American flag!).

“Look,” I said to the reporter, “This is getting worse: I didn’t realize that there was an American flag there, so one minute, let me check …”

“Oh yes, holy s***!”

“So, you are killing the logo for this reason?”

Silence.

Well, as you can see, I said readers are blind to logos …

But we are mentally sound enough to realize that your bosses are insane.

If they think that the American flag is the problem to their circulation crisis … these guys must be fired.

On the spot.

And shame on them!

Leave it to one of Pinch's papers to focus on the flag, reacting to it with the same vampire-like fashion as the City of Los Angeles airbrushing the cross out of the city seal.

In a more benign version of an unnecessary old media update, Christian Toto notes that Jay Leno's days on the Tonight Show may be numbered:

It all goes back to a rushed business decision the Peacock network made four years ago to keep Conan O’Brien in the fold. Contract talks with the red-headed comic, who seemed unlikely to last the week, let alone 14-plus years when he first replaced David Letterman, had hit a major snag.

So the network suits threw him a Hail Mary — you can take over The Tonight Show in five years if you stay with the NBC family. Heck, there’s no way Leno will still be the king of that time slot by 2009, right.

Right?

Flash forward to 2008, and Leno remains the undisputed late night champ. The Tonight Show earns more than $100 million annually for NBC, according to press reports. The program regularly trumps rival David Letterman’s The Late Show in the ratings with little sign of slipping.

The change is expected to happen mid-next year. O’Brien will assume The Tonight Show hosting duties, former Saturday Night Live star Jimmy Fallon slips into O’Brien’s Late Night slot and Leno gets to scratch his iconic chin while considering his next move.

Whatever Jay's politics, like Carson, he's managed to craft a benign image that appeals perfectly to television's aging audience and the heartland in general. Much like the ground the TV networks lost to the Internet when the last generation of anchormen left the airwaves (Brokaw via retirement, Jennings via his untimely death, and Dan Rather via his own overarching stupidity), NBC's likely making a profound error by pushing out Leno.