I'd like to see a Chris Hansen style confrontation, where they track down trolls, confront them with what they've written, and then see how they justify or apologize their way out of the situation.
I can't imagine a 13 year old defending his racist rants behind a veil of tears being particularly entertaining. The fact that this particular guy happened to be an adult is probably a bit of an enigma within the world of trolls.
I think you are under-estimating the percentage of trolls that are grown adults.
Then again, I grew up in a place where the local paper's letters to the editor read like a best-of collection of racist trolling (pre-internet, even.) Most of the letter writers were over 70 and still spouting ungrammatical poorly-articulated vitriol.
I think people forget that reality TV and the like are edited and spliced to appeal to the audience. Anything you see on TV is weighted to determine if its entertaining or not... should a show/news cast adopt the OP's recommendation you can safely assume that each "lead" they track down that ends up at a kid would be simply swept away because it doesn't make for good TV.
I'd like to see a Chris Hansen style confrontation, where they track down trolls, confront them with what they've written, and then see how they justify or apologize their way out of the situation.