I'm afraid it's a fundamental problem, not related just to press per se.

Titles fight for attention, the most spectacular/salient ones win. Even here on HN, with much more sophisticated readers than general press/web have.

This is Red Queen effect:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_queen

Not really. If I did understand the details - due to the egg -shaped orbit, the distance at which moon is closest to earth (perigee) over the month/year varies every period. The current event is additionally happening over a full moon, which brings extra effects on its visible size, brightness and tides on the sea.

"today's event will be the closest lunar perigee since 1993, at 221,560 miles (356,566 kilometers) from Earth."

On average, the Moon is 378,000 km away, and at furthest, it is 399,300 km away from the Earth's surface. So, yesterday's full moon was 6% closer than the average.

Update: I found a apogee and perigee calculator http://www.fourmilab.ch/earthview/pacalc.html

Last closest was in 1993, which was also a full moon.

Mar 8 8:36 356529 km ++ F- 1h

Yesterday's in 2008 :

Dec 12 21:38 356567 km ++ F+ 4h

Ok, I think it is more like ... Mar 1993, Dec 2008, Nov 2016 ... mark the "local minima" if you plot month over month distance of the moon at perigee.