One might expect that local news are well connected with those who actually did construction, planning and whatnot of such projects, or emergency responders, or disaster mitigation, or people specialized in local geology / hydrology to show up challenges...
The sad truth is that "local" news more often than not barely has any local people any more, a lot of content is directly ripped off from others (especially fire dep't or police reports, with the added problem that no one challenges the copaganda), or not local at all but produced/sourced by central agencies, or theoretically "local" reporters have such large areas to cover that they can't reasonably build relationships with experts.
No. Local news is free over the air. Thus, it is paid for by advertising. Thus, you (the watcher) are the product. Hence, it is low quality. Local news is interested in producing as much clickbait emotional content as possible to drive up viewership. See: CNN, Fox News, MSNBC. All are "free" and terrible for depth of their reporting.
That’s such a ludicrously low bar that I’m not even sure this would qualify as a compliment to these alternative producers.