It’s hit national news pretty hard. This particular discovery (teicobaxin) is significant as taking a different approach to kill bacteria than current antibiotics, which means it would likely be decades before there are issues of antibiotic resistance. It’s not (as some articles have made it seem) completely immune to ever having resistance develop. Also, it has not been tested in humans yet, so there’s a chance it might not actually work out.
The other interesting thing is how they discovered it, using the natural environment to look at potential antibiotics that previously could not be investigated because they wouldn’t grow in a lab setting.
This is a pretty good article: http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/science/2015/01/07/northeastern-researchers-discover-new-antibiotic-maine-soil-sample/iZRrB4F0yzcQuV1LFeCiiK/story.html
There’s some definite sensationalism in almost everything I’ve read except the paper itself, and people are getting a few steps ahead of themselves. It’s got serious potential, though.
(Also, on a side note, I just started a neurobiology class today where the prof fit in multiple bashes against Kurzweil, the source of those articles from the OP.)