With the rewrite, Spock's original plan makes no real sense. If it was the Romulan star going nova, then there was no way to save Romulus in any form. After the star had been collapsed into a black hole, the remaining Romulans would've frozen to death in a few hours time.
It would not have been mere hours, but more like weeks before temperature dropped terribly low. Oceans might freeze in days.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cn...n-an-earth-like-planet-orbiting-a-black-hole/
Even so, if we with our pre-warp technology can imagine environments, underground and on ocean floors, where we might persist, what options would the Romulans have?
Also note that the Romulans will be desperate. Even catastrophic outcomes might look good if the alternative is the physical destruction of Romulus with everyone left on it.
Picard was actually pretty lenient on that journalist before he had the meltdown. Thus he may not have bothered to correct her geography errors. He could have pointed out that he won't talk about his departure from Starfleet but he actually decided to answer her question.
"Romulan star" could have any number of meanings, sure; there is flexibility there, maybe.
That said, if anyone was talking about "the Vulcan star", or still better "the Earth Star", few would have any illusions as to the celestial body that was being talked about. Saying that "Romulan star" does not refer to the star of Romulus verges on special pleasing at this point, especially with
The Last Best Hope specifying that it was the Romulan star. The writing staff of
Picard has been quite good about trying to cover everything: How likely is it that they would not know, and would not make clear to that novel's author, which star they thought it was that blew up? The word "Hobus", to the best of my knowledge, is not mentioned there.
