Well yes, why do you think the noise died after the initial hype of Snowden leaking the docs? Do you honestly believe the mechanisms of for-profit journalism lets journalists be journalists? They got to eat and in this world you don't eat by covering yesterdays news.
NSA didn't have to lift a finger. Wait a few weeks and people move on to the next story, this should not be a shocking revelation to anyone.
The British intelligence agencies forced the Guardian to literally shred the laptop with the contents while they were in the swing of running headlines about the things it was revealing.
While the USA and the UK are different, I suspect there was a bit more difficult for the NSA than "didn't have to lift a finger".
NSA didn't have to lift a finger. Wait a few weeks and people move on to the next story, this should not be a shocking revelation to anyone.