It’s not every day that we get to announce that some of our staff members have received state-level awards, as is the case in today’s front-page story.

As such, we wanted to take a few minutes to deliver a heartfelt thank-you — to you: the person reading this right now.

Whether you’re a print subscriber who’s been with us for the long haul or who recently joined up, whether you read us with a digital subscription, or heck, even if you just pick us up and skim through while in a coffeeshop or waiting room throughout the region:

THANK YOU.

It is your engagement and support that allows us to do what we do for a living. Without you, we don’t have the opportunity to write awesome feature stories about cool people doing amazing things; to make intricate layouts and page designs about some of our (and your!) favorite franchises and topics; or to inform our community about the events happening around them and decisions that will affect them.

We could wax poetic about the state of our industry — but that’s tired and depressing. You know just as well as we do that there are fewer and smaller newspapers these days, with less ability to afford the number of employees that our respective coverage areas really could benefit from.

What we do have, though, is a hard-working collective of people who are skilled and experienced enough to punch far above our weight and young enough to be motivated to try to make a difference and keep this 144-year-old ship afloat.

We take our jobs seriously — and that includes our responsibility to you, dear reader. Every edition of The Express is compiled with our readership and our region in mind, be it:

— The amount and prioritization of our local content, ranging from Bellefonte to Jersey Shore and everywhere in between, all prouldy created without generative AI;

— Our statewide coverage courtesy of SpotlightPA and Penn Capital-Star;

— Associated Press coverage of national and world events that could have effects and impacts on our lives here;

— Or feature stories chosen to interest and inspire our readers with tales of people just like them who have done great deeds.

All of this, and more, is created and assembled for you.

We hope you appreciate us as much as we appreciate you — Facebook trolls notwithstanding!

There are a lot of people from all walks of life and interests who still pick up (or scroll) their local newspaper, and we try to make sure that there is something for everyone.

That said, we know not everyone will like every story — but we would encourage you to remember that for every story you don’t like, someone else considered it their favorite read for the day, and those readers are valid, too.

All in all, we just wanted to set aside some space to say that we love what we do, and we hope that our passion manages to come through in the quality of our work.

We’re not necessarily what a lot of people think of us on the outside: we’re young, we have a lot of fun, we live locally, we have cultivated a great, very not corporate environment — and we couldn’t do any of it without our readers, advertisers and everyone who believes in us.

From our merry hearts and ink-stained fingertips, once again:

THANK YOU.

We hope you will continue supporting us in the years to come as we continue producing our award-winning little engine that could.