Pro-active news reporting at the local level.

I was listening to an interesting report on NPR. It involved the financial crisis, and how Broadcast News missed the big story. It was a postmortem on the coverage of the imploding mortgage mess. Question is. Where were the reporters months ago when the story was developing? A journalist from Business Week said the magazine reported on the potential dangers of the sub-prime mortgage market a year ago. That is one magazine, where was broadcast news, or the papers? Sure everyone is pointing fingers now, but the bottom line according to NPR, “The news media failed to alert viewers, and give the story the importance it deserved. In their words, the media failed to be creative, and make America pay attention.
Lets bring it down to the local level. Just about everyone knows someone who has lost a job, or a home. This is a hyper-local story, but local news has to share its portion of the blame for not being pro-active in investigating the story. Given that background, and analysis lets look at how to improve the local news model. This is an example of a story that affects everyone around the neighborhood. What should we expect from local broadcast news organizations? I’m talking about CONTENT. How can broadcast news do its job in getting local citizen to take notice? We may have the greatest story on earth, a real scoop, yet if people don’t watch, or pay attention that story is dead. I’d like to hear your suggestions of how local broadcast news can do a better job in investigating the story, before the situation becomes a crisis.