Cicadamania

“ I admire your insight, creativity and persistence.”

When I was media relations specialist at the University of Maryland covering life sciences, I found out that millions of Brood X cicadas would emerge from 17 years underground in spring, 2004.  I figured we should be ready, in case the media decided it was a good story.  Months before the first cicada crawled out of the dirt, we had in place a media plan, a knowledgeable and charismatic professor of entomology, Mike Raupp, his graduate student Cicadamaniacs, and a media/public information web site. Then we waited for the noisy gang of insect teenagers to start buzzing.

Even we were surprised at the cicada mania that exploded. In only a few weeks, the University of Maryland emerged as a leading source on the cicada invasion. More than 120 media outlets from as far away as Japan and as close as Washington and Baltimore came to or called College Park to talk to our experts.  Reporters called constantly, saying “I hear the University of Maryland is the place to go for cicada experts.”  When the last cicada had sung its lonely song in early July, millions of people around the world had seen on television or read in print the words of Prof. Raupp and our Cicadamaniacs.  Tens of thousands had visited our website, and hundreds had received direct replies to e-mails.  (Oh, that Twitter and Facebook had been around then!)  It was a perfect storm of bugs and media coverage for the University of Maryland that earned us a coveted Gold Award from CASE.