If you’re reading this as one of the five free articles non-subscribers can read at TheAlpenaNews.com or in a paper you just picked up for the day, you should invest in a subscription to help yourself and your community.

For about the price of a large latte a week, here are five things your subscription to The News can do:

1. Make you a more informed citizen. Six days a week in print and seven days a week online, The News publishes award-winning stories on everything from local government to the environment, local schools to health care, local crime to the economy, and more. Your subscription helps us produce the content that arms you with the information you need to know how you want to vote, where you want to shop, the causes to which you want to donate your time or money, and the events you want to attend.

2. Support local businesses. Supporting The News not only helps us help local businesses tell their story through advertising, it also helps us invest thousands of dollars a year in the local businesses from which we buy supplies and services.

3. Support local nonprofits. We write not only about the problems affecting our community but also about those working hard through volunteerism and charity to fix those problems. Subscribing to The News keeps you in the loop on those efforts, helps us give thousands of dollars to local charities every year, and supports our own efforts such as Newspapers in Education, which helps put newspapers in classrooms to improve civic education and literacy.

4. Keep your community healthy. Numerous studies have shown that communities without newspapers tend to have higher taxes, more government debt, lower voter turnout, and fewer local small businesses. Your investment in The News keeps us strong so we can continue supporting the community.

5. Give yourself a voice. Politicians read newspapers, and your subscription helps us maintain our Commentary page, where anyone in the community can share their thoughts through letters to the editor and guest column submissions. Your state rep, state senator, or congressman or congresswoman may not read your Facebook post or Twitter thread, but they’ll see your voice in the newspaper.

If you don’t have a subscription, visit TheAlpenaNews.com/subscribe or call 989-354-3111 to get started today.