In April of this year the New York Times printed the headline "Bed Bugs On the Rise in New York City". They began with explaining exactly how tiny these creatures are in order to give the readers that creeped out factor. You can't help but feel helpless when faced with something so tiny you may not see it. They then followed this with a reminder of the childhood rhyme "Sleep tight. Don't let the bed bugs bite.", making you wonder if they really were sharing the bed with you then. At this point they go on to explain that this terror to society was all but extinct in the U.S. for the last 40 years and asks why they came roaring back in the late 1990s. Now they speak of the EPA and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention as acknowledging that there is a problem with bed bugs and that they advise cleaning around crevices and frequent vacuuming (sounds a little bit of weak advice for a problem that is worthy of New York Times headlines).
They were making this out like an epidemic, but it was far from it. But, it made a great story from a sales point of view! Everyone is creeped out by them and even more so when an article is telling you that they can be found in a 4 star hotel room. If you owed a paper and had to choose news stories by relevance and most valuable information for your reader, bedbugs probably would not have made the cut. Pretty sure this yellow press was meant to get people into frenzy and tell all their other friends to read the article too!
Maybe Apple suggested they write it in order to sell their app Bed Bug Alert....
