It was a big story because (a) it was the first time it was attempted; and (b) there were concerns that older software would need manual intervention to update

It was a big story because (a) it was the first time it was attempted; and (b) there were concerns that older software would need manual intervention to update the key, thus there was a need to make it into a big story to ensure appropriate folks would update the trust anchor (this turned out to be a non-issue).