Headsup to Local News: quantity doesn't equal quality

In the recent winter snow storm blanketing much of Oregon and southwest Washington,  our local television affiliates pulled out all the stops to provide saturation coverage.   The Oregonian covered the phenomenon with its own article about the "non stop" hours of live storm coverage.   As consumers of news, however,  we found it almost useless to tune in from the perspective of information gained.   I recall the news anchor on one station cutting to his reporter in the field who spent two or three minutes standing in front of a car in a snow drift explaining that there was a risk of this happening all over the Metropolitan Area.   My suspicion is that few viewers lacked that information.   Twenty minutes later,   the same station cut back to the same intrepid reporter and beached car.   This is not "news"!  Equally problematic were the meterologist reports.   On the same station,  the meteorologist closed his segment saying "That's right,  the temperature will be above or below that freezing level in most areas tonight."   On Wednesday afternoon,  the 24th,  I-5 northbound shut down,  apparently for a variety of reasons,  from Salem fifty miles south of here to Portland.   I-5 southbound shut down at approximately the same time,  largely due to ODOT's decision that the road was impassable  and required them to scrape and plow intensely.  The resulting traffic tie ups were monumental and long lasting.   Some of our offspring,  driving north,  were unfortunate enough to be caught the trap.   They left Salem at about 3PM and had not gone twenty miles by eight.   They didn't reach Portland until almost midnight.   Most frustrating was that the news chose to focus on replaying the ODOT equipment and the backup at Wilsonville since that probably was where they could conveniently site their camera without getting in the traffic jam themselves.   While we could talk with our kids by phone and could tell them what was on the Traffic Cams ahead of them online,    the news coverage gave us almost no information.   Short story: biggest winter storm in my lifetime and the news coverage remained stuck in a drift the whole time.