Yes it was intentional. The change came from sloan but the
issue is that the title of the page is displayed in the master template and also in the news.adp page so it actually ended up being displayed twice in a row
(and I think three times in a row on the preview page although I don't remember exactly). Anyway, it could be
done more cleanly but the current presentation seems reasonable.
Well, since the variable is set one might assume that it is set to something reasonable. If it doesn't want to be displayed it should really be changed in the template since it is a display choice not a logic choice.