People have the opportunity to write news, but the will to write news isn't there, yet. With ~9 months of open-beta under our belts and no interference or incentivizing content of any stripe, people just don't cover what's in front of them. Fundamentally, I believe this is because people have a herding instinct and seek to be a member of a larger group. It's also possible that community-level(local) issues are "too close to home" for non-professionals to risk community reputation on.

Many people validate their positions--and themselves--by the quantity of people that agree with them which leads to holding popular positions.

At certain points in time altruism and necessity meet to overcome these social forces, but it's usually only when crisis forces everyone to the table.