In case you missed it, check out the piece by Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan published a few days ago (“The local-news crisis is destroying what a divided America desperately needs: Common ground“).

She begins with the painful numbers.

A Pew Research study showed that between 2008 and last year, employment in newspaper newsrooms declined by an astonishing 45 percent. (And papers were already well down from their newsroom peak in the early 1990s, when their revenue lifeblood — print advertising — was still pumping strong.)

The dire numbers play out in ugly ways: Public officials aren’t held accountable, town budgets go unscrutinized, experienced journalists are working at Walmart, or not at all, instead of plying their much-needed trade in their communities.

Then she goes on to summarize her point in a single sentence.

And there’s another result that gets less attention:

In our terribly divided nation, we need the local newspaper to give us common information — an agreed-upon set of facts to argue about.

In her experience, those who rely on local news have at least something to argue about. Those who rely on social media or cable news are, in her words, “deep in their own echo chambers.”

It’s not a long column, but it will hopefully provoke some thinking.