Nieman Foundation at Harvard
Are you still looking for a holiday gift for the journalist in your life, or perhaps just doing a little shopping for yourself? We’ve got a bunch of ideas for you, whether you’re looking to give someone something to wear, something to read, or something to help organize life.
A local news board game. There’s a board game for everything, and that includes playing the role of a local newspaper editor-in-chief managing a newsroom of forest critters. In Fit to Print, players are given a pile of tiles branded with faux article headlines, images, and ads to lay out for papers like The Evening Hoot, The Babbling Brook, and The Prairie Courier (“Fowl play in missing hen case”). For the CMS gremlins among us, a throwback to the days of typesetting, column inches, and proofs is a welcome change of pace. Grab your press pass, and go break some news that, refreshingly, has absolutely zero stakes. (Fit to Print, $33 on Amazon) — Andrew Deck, Nieman Lab generative AI staff writer
The autobiography of a newspaper great. Personal History by Katharine Graham is an extraordinary autobiography that I’ve given as a gift many times over, usually to women. The account of the awkward, privileged girl who would become publisher of The Washington Post and one of the most consequential media executives of the 20th century is both tragic and thrilling and bound with a candor about the familiar ways in which fear of failure can hobble even a woman of her intellect. But the book has gained new power for me this year in the wake of the news that some newspaper owners couldn’t raise the courage to publish a presidential endorsement, let alone slay giants, as Graham did. Imagine the woman who stared down the Nixon White House during the Post’s Watergate coverage being too timid to publish a political endorsement.
For a celebration of the Pulitzer Prize centennial, I invited Donald Graham — Katharine Graham’s son and Washington Post successor — to read aloud from his mother’s autobiography. He chose an excerpt in which she describes the excruciating pressure she endured in deciding whether or not to publish the Pentagon Papers — in the very same week her company was going public. (That move would make her the only women CEO of a Fortune 1000 company. “Nine hundred ninety nine guys and her,” Don said.) Her lawyers argued against publishing, fearing fatal damage to the company; her editors lobbied hard to proceed, warning “the soul of the newspaper was at stake.” Listen to Don’s pride as he reads his mother’s account of the call in which she rendered her decision, a passage that still gives me chills. “Frightened and tense, I took a big gulp and said, ‘Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. Let’s go. Let’s publish.’ And I hung up.” You may know a newspaper owner who could use the book in his Christmas stocking. (Personal History by Katharine Graham, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1997, is available in print and as an ebook. Or listen to the recording of the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, movingly read by the author.) — Ann Marie Lipinski, curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism
A near-universal news subscription. Stick with me here. When Apple News+ debuted in 2019, it was a disappointment. The service’s DNA was in the app Texture, which was built around reading magazine issues. And while magazine issues are fine, they positioned the product as a lifestyle sub with only a vague hint of news attached.
That’s changed. The issue metaphor has been replaced with story-level navigation. Magazines that used to only upload their print products now also include all their daily web journalism. Infrastructure for push notifications has been built out. And, most importantly, the participating outlets have expanded in a newsy direction — at the same time that the paywalling of every decent news source has become de rigeur. The result is that a subscription to Apple News+ — along with a sub to The New York Times and/or Washington Post — will get you surprisingly close to a universal subscription to U.S. news.
An Apple News+ sub gets you The Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times. It gets you an array of the newsiest paywalled magazines (The New Yorker, Wired, Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, New York, Bloomberg Businessweek, Forbes). It gets you The Athletic. It gets you past a surprising array of non-U.S. anglosphere paywalls (The Times of London, The Globe and Mail, The Telegraph, and nearly every metro daily in Canada). And thanks to a big push into newspapers, it gets you access to the largest metro daily in 25 of the 40 largest U.S. markets. (Namely: Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Miami, Phoenix, San Francisco, Detroit, Minneapolis, San Diego, Charlotte, San Antonio, Portland, Austin, Sacramento, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Columbus, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Nashville, Jacksonville, Providence, and Milwaukee.)
Plus, it now comes as part of the Apple One Premier bundle, meaning if you’re already an Apple Music and TV+ subscriber who needs some extra iCloud space, News+ becomes a bargain. (Apple News+, starting at $12.99 per month after a one-month free trial.) — Joshua Benton, Nieman Lab senior writer
A print news magazine for kids. My household doesn’t subscribe to Time or The Economist or Newsweek, but we do get a weekly news print magazine — that’d be The Week Junior, and while it’s aimed at 8- to 14-year-olds and comes addressed to my two older kids, I read every issue. I couldn’t quite imagine how a kids’ magazine would pull off coverage of school shootings, Trump v. Biden, Ukraine, or Israel-Palestine — but The Week Junior somehow pulls it off, alongside plenty of news about animals, science, sports, nature, culture (the new Wimpy Kid book, podcast recommendations), plus crafts, puzzles, and recipes. Politically, it’s about as close to center as a kids’ news magazine can be, with a general focus on encouraging its readers to form their own opinions; each issue features both sides of a debate, like “Should schools still have snow days?” or “Should gas-powered leaf blowers be banned?” I said before that I read it — you’re probably wondering if my kids do, too. The answer is…sometimes. Yesterday, my son actually asked, “Where’s the new issue of that magazine?” sat down, and read four pages. This was great, both for the timing of this gift guide and for encouraging my belief that kids will read news if we help them get in the habit. (The Week Junior, $49.95 for 25 issues) — Laura Hazard Owen, Nieman Lab editor
Choose your own book adventure. If your favorite journalist’s favorite journalist is Rachel Aviv or Janet Malcolm, they’ve likely already read The Journalist and the Murderer, The Silent Woman, and Strangers to Ourselves. Take a swing and get them Mind Fixers by Anne Harrington or T.M. Luhrmann’s Of Two Minds? The first, from a history of science professor at Harvard, is the surprise-filled story of the search for the biological basis of mental illness. The second, mentioned by Aviv herself in an interview with Ezra Klein, is an anthropological study that follows new doctors being trained at a pivotal moment in the history of psychiatry. It’s exhaustive but not exhausting — and touches on how medical training affects patient care, some juicy academic in-fighting, the changing health care system, and more.
I finally read Doppelganger by Naomi Klein last year. If that’s too close to home — i.e. you cannot read about conspiracy theories or Twitter happenings off the clock — Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe is a smart, unexpected, and immensely funny little novel that touches on similar themes of identity and persona crafting.
If your journalist rolls their eyes at hysterical and ahistorical commentary, perhaps they’d like a book of lesser-known history? I recommend King Leopold’s Ghost, American Midnight, and How to Hide an Empire.
For something short, sweet, and funny, try Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin or Heartburn by Nora Ephron. (“Heartburn is a Washington novel and a Washington Post novel: It’s based on Ephron’s explosive breakup with legendary Post Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein.”) The excellent indie bookshop Golden Hour in Newburgh, New York always has them in stock.
I also recommend a gift that encourages their favorite screen-less activities. This could look like a gift certificate to their local running store or a fresh set of watercolors or a ceramics course to take together. Unsure where to start? There’s a special joy in returning to a pursuit you thought has passed you by — so if you know they wish their parents had let them do jazz piano or they practice their toe loop while watching the Olympics or lament they should have taken woodshop in high school, let that guide you. — Sarah Scire, Nieman Lab deputy editor
A newspaper novel. I’m far from alone in adoring Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series, so when he recommended a 1967 novel called Towards the End of the Morning by Michael Frayn in a recent New York Times interview, I was immediately interested — and when I found out it’s about working at a mediocre British newspaper on Fleet Street, I was sold. Towards the End of the Morning is, as Osman promised, a very funny book about fairly ordinary journalists wishing they were doing something grander and more glamorous with their lives. Frayn himself worked at the Guardian and the Observer, and the book’s filled with details about the day-to-day of working for a paper at the time. (Among other things, it’s very white and very male, you won’t be shocked to hear; the book includes several well-drawn women characters, one of the reasons I liked it, but they’re not journalists.) There are perks — beer at lunch, “complimentary tickets for the National Provincial Bank’s performance of The Pirates of Penzance,” and occasional press junkets (“It’s a week off from the stinking office, with nothing to do but collect a few pix from the firm, slap some sort of crap together from the handout, and get some serious drinking done”) — but the main characters are beset with doubt about their life choices. For them, even though it’s the 1960s, the golden age of media is already over. “You wouldn’t have lasted a week on the old West Midlands Post,” the Pictures Editor yells at a photographer. “If this was a real newspaper, and not a rest home for old gentlemen, I’d scare the living shits out of you lot.” Towards the End of the Morning has been reissued in print in the U.S. by Valancourt Books and is available in paperback ($15.99) or as an ebook. (Valancourt Books / Bookshop.org / Amazon) — Laura Hazard Owen
Two oral histories. The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture, by Tricia Romano, and Paper of Wreckage: An Oral History of the New York Post, by Susan Mulcahy and Frank DiGiacomo, are two oral histories released in 2024, chronicling two very different New York City journalism institutions — both of which were crucial in the evolution of a certain past-and-future president. The stories even overlap at times. From Paper of Wreckage, George Rush on how Trump worked the Post’s lax standards:
Trump viewed the tabloids as a public address system, and I think he felt like the Post was probably easier to get into because its standards were more lenient. They would accept anything he told them. In the pre-internet age, New York’s tabloids were a kind of Twitter for him where he could just spout off at will, and a lot of the pugilistic circus performer skills he is famous for were developed in the tabloids.
And from The Freaks Came Out to Write, Tom Robbins on Trump’s habit of digging up dirt on reporters who covered him:
Trump was omnivorous in terms of being able to soak up information about the reporters that he was talking to. He thought that he could figure out a way to get you under his thumb. He didn’t have to worry about you anymore because he could come back and use that against you. I’ve known a number of people that he’s done that to, to their great embarrassment. The next thing you knew Trump was exposing them on Page Six.
(The Freaks Came Out to Write, $35 hardcover/$19.99 ebook, Amazon / Bookshop.org. Paper of Wreckage, $32.50 hardcover/$16.99 ebook, Amazon / Bookshop.org.) — Joshua Benton
A pencil for the coldest of reporting conditions. During my time as a correspondent based in Beijing, I once found myself reporting a story out in the Chinese countryside in the bitter cold of winter. The interview seemed to be going well until I looked down and saw that my notebook remained stubbornly blank despite the quotes I’d been scribbling in it — the ink had frozen in my pen. That taught me the value of having a pencil of some kind in your reporter’s toolkit, especially a mechanical one you don’t have to worry about sharpening. Pentel’s Kerry pencil is a great choice, not just because it looks and feels more like a pen but also because, like a pen, it comes with a cap: no more graphite stains if you keep it in your shirt pocket or getting jabbed in the thigh if you keep it in your pants pocket. (Pentel Kerry mechanical pencil with 0.5 mm lead or 0.7 mm lead, $24) — Henry Chu, Nieman Foundation deputy curator
A refillable all-metal pen that writes like a dream. I’m one of those writers who still handwrites on the regular — notes, to-dos, stray thoughts — and while I tend to flit between notebooks, there is one pen that I reach for more than any other: the Zebra G-750. The pen is made entirely of metal, so it has an incredibly satisfying heft to it, and the gel ink flows smoothly and dries quickly. Best of all, it’s refillable, which means (at least a little) less waste, and I tend to toss a two-pack of ink in my bag whenever I travel so I’m never caught with a dry pen. ($13 for the pen and two extra ink cartridges) — Neel Dhanesha, Nieman Lab staff writer
The best book light. For the consideration of kindred night owls who unwind by reading in bed, I’ve been using a Glocusent book light for a couple years. While a bit bulky looking, I love it because it’s long-lasting and rechargeable; it hangs around your neck and has bendable arms, a combination that makes it easy to illuminate your page however you’re sitting or lying (and is infinitely superior, I think, to a clip-on page light); and it offers three different shades of light (I prefer the warm yellow) and adjustable brightness. Also good for travel, with the caveat that it can turn on in your backpack if the button bumps up against anything else, to ghostly effect. (Glocusent Neck Reading Light, $21.99) — Sophie Culpepper, Nieman Lab local news staff writer
Journalist-designed jewelry. If you’re looking for statement jewelry pieces to gift (or for yourself!), check out Delayr: an online shop launched this month by California-based journalist Sahar Habib Ghazi as a way to express her creativity and reconnect with a childhood passion.
Ghazi grew up in the jewelry business — her mother is a jewelry designer in Pakistan — testing pieces for durability, packaging shipments, and modeling items for customers. But she ultimately pursued a career in journalism, during which she worked for several major news outlets in the United States and Pakistan for nearly 20 years.
Delayr means “audacious” in Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, and Farsi, which is a great way to describe Ghazi. On Instagram, Ghazi posts and discusses major news stories, fact-checks viral posts, and shares recipes and tidbits of her life. She’s honest and vulnerable when it comes to sharing insights into her parenting style (she has a 12-year-old daughter) and answering questions from followers about the realities of working in journalism.
The first drop in the collection includes four pairs of earrings, three necklaces, and three bracelets, and one set of three bracelets. All the pieces 18 karat gold-filled, an affordable alternative to solid gold. Per the website, the pieces are “tarnish-resistant, waterproof, and safe for sensitive skin.” I can’t wait to wear the earrings ($45) and bracelets ($65) I ordered because after following her work for years, I know Ghazi doesn’t cut corners on quality. — Hanaa’ Tameez, Nieman Lab staff writer
“On the record” / “off the record” socks. It’s hard to speculate what 2025 will hold, but we’re near certain the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) will be working overtime. Luckily there is a way to support them and kick back in cute merch while you’re at it. Set up a sustaining monthly donation of $10 dollars or more with RCFP and you’ll receive a pair of socks — one printed with “off the record” and red trim, the other with “on the record” and green trim. The donation will go to RCFP’s pro bono litigation in the U.S., its FOIA hotline and compliance lawsuits, and its offer of legal protection for journalists under threat. So, sustaining monthly donations…maybe not the most economical gift. But supporting press freedom is a gift to yourself and the journalists in your life. — Andrew Deck
Easier interview scheduling. I love Calendly so much I’ve written about it before. Calendly is a fantastic way to schedule virtual meetings that easily integrates into Outlook and Gmail. I send my Calendly link to sources, colleagues, and journalism friends to schedule time to chat. No more back-and-forth over email of “What time works best for you? I’m free any time,” “Actually, I’m not free then,” “How about we chat in the new year?” Calendly allows you to input your general availability, and you can connect your own calendar so that Calendly won’t let people schedule a meeting when you have your twice-annual dentist appointment.
You can choose your meeting length and format (Zoom, Google Meet, phone) and your guests will get a calendar invite in your inbox with the relevant meeting link. Calendly also adjusts for time differences between you and your guests, so no one says “Oh, I thought we were meeting at my 9AM.” I have Calendly links that are labeled as “on the record” and “off the record,” so whoever I’m chatting with has a clear understanding on the parameters of our meeting.
I find Calendly most helpful for scheduling interviews for larger, multiple-source stories, catching up with interesting people I met at conferences, and for pre-reporting stories. (A standard plan starts at $120 for a year.) — Hanaa’ Tameez
A paper planner. I can feel the Google Calendar devotees rolling their eyes…while I acknowledge, practically, that a paper planner is almost anachronistic when there are a zillion sleek planner and calendar apps to choose from, I’ve been keeping a paper planner since at least high school and I don’t plan on changing anytime soon. I don’t have an allegiance to a specific brand — I usually pick one up in late December at a bookstore or paper store, and the act of choosing one has become a low-stakes personal ritual for ending one year and entering another. I like something with a fun/cute design (2024 is yellow with purple flowers), and a week view over two pages (based on experience, week to a page is not enough space for my scribbles; page a day is too much; so week to two pages is, at least for me, the Goldilocks planner). I think I enjoy having a messy, physical record of my life? Since so much else in it is virtual by necessity…and, the act of jotting down my plans and reminders is somehow more satisfying to me than typing them. Maybe there’s a journalist in your life who feels the same way! — Sophie Culpepper
A do-it-all productivity tool. Since the start of the pandemic, I’ve tried (and paid for) a lot of productivity tools, apps, and hacks to balance and organize my work and personal priorities. In 2024, I’ve finally settled on Lunatask, a mobile and desktop app that works as a to-do list, journal, habit tracker, and notebook, all in one.
The feature I love and use the most is the to-do list, which allows me to lay out what needs to get done that day, how long I estimate to spend on each task, and a timer to monitor how much time I actually spend on each task. Lunatask also asks you to prioritize each task on your list (highest, high, normal, low, lowest) to help you determine an order of completion, a feature the company says is built in to support users with ADHD. You can also add subtasks to each task on your list, making it easier to tackle seemingly large/overwhelming items on your plate. Lunatask also lets you sync your calendars to the app, so you can fit your tasks around your meetings and appointments.
A paid subscription gives you multiple “areas of life” so you can keep your work and personal tasks separate. I use one area for work-related tasks like going through interview transcripts, listing out the emails I need to send, writing stories, making edits, and more. My personal area is for listing out bills I need to pay, my grocery lists, chores, etc. At the end of each day, I can roll over incomplete tasks to another day and get a satisfying list of the things I did accomplish. ($72 per year if you choose annual billing. Make sure to ask about the 50% discount for students and teachers.) — Hanaa’ Tameez
A Spanish-friendly transcription service. Sonix is the best transcription service I’ve used. It uses artificial intelligence to transcribe audio files and translate and analyze those transcriptions. The transcriptions of my interviews for Nieman Lab stories have always been accurate, easy to read, and easy to edit. Sonix also offers a feature to omit filler words, and transcriptions are often ready in 15 minutes or less. Because Sonix can transcribe 50 languages, it’s been a game-changer of a tool for me to report in Spanish. The transcriptions in Spanish are just as good as in English — which I can’t say about any other transcription tool I’ve used — and saves me so much time in revising and translating quotes. ($10 per hour on the free plan, $5 per hour on a premium plan, plus $22 per month.) — Hanaa’ Tameez
A “power” read-it-later app. The internet is a great and terrible place, full of things to read. Too many things to read. One day those things will acquire sentience and form, rising up out of the servers to take over the world, the solar system, the universe, engulfing all that is and ever will be with their sheer magnitude.
Or at least, that’s how it often feels. Over the years I’ve tried a variety of read-it-later apps and bookmarking services and note-taking systems in an attempt to corral all the things that pique my interest online, and none of them have worked — except for Readwise Reader, which I discovered this year and promptly bought a subscription to. It does the usual article-saving, but it goes way beyond that: you can save PDFs, social media threads, ebooks, and YouTube videos (the app even generates transcripts of the videos that are better than the auto-generated ones on YouTube, and you can highlight words or click on them to jump to the right timestamp). It even imports my Kindle highlights and supports both RSS feeds and newsletters; I’ve set up my email accounts to automatically forward my existing newsletter subscriptions to Readwise so my inbox remains under control, and having them all in one place has gotten me to read them way more regularly than I used to. But perhaps the most magical feature is the highlighter: once I save an article to Readwise, I can highlight phrases in either Readwise’s reader or the original article page, and the highlights will show up on both. The internet has never felt more readable. (Readwise Reader, in beta so pricing may change, but I paid $120 for a yearly subscription.) — Neel Dhanesha
A donation to a local news outlet. Most local news organizations are in the midst of an end-of-year fundraising push, and if yours is one of the nearly 400 Institute for Nonprofit News members participating in NewsMatch (as my former workplace and current local news source both are), giving now will mean your donation goes further. If you’re a Nieman Lab reader, I don’t need to tell you why local news deserves and needs your support! I’ll just emphasize that in many cases, giving helps bring you the news by helping pay the people in that newsroom for the essential public service they provide — reporters who are probably working well beyond 9 to 5 to attend public meetings and cover breaking news. P.S. While getting your donation matched now is worthwhile, the best way to sustain your local news outlet in the longer term is by becoming a recurring supporter (I give $10 a month to Brookline.News). — Sophie Culpepper
