Coffee, heated mattress pads, video games, and books, of course.

Stumped on what to get the journalist in your life this year? You’re bound to find something that works below, whether the person’s true passion is interviewing, caffeinating, or snuggling.

Write

I’ve been using Field Notes notebooks for years; their size is perfect for slipping into a pocket, and I love that they lay flat. But there’s just something special about a reporter’s notebook, and Field Notes elevates the form with a design it calls Front Page. It’s long and thin — still a good size for slipping into a coat or the back pocket of a pair of jeans, spiral bound, easy to write on while just holding it in one hand, and has a handy little pocket in the back for business cards or other small items. It’s the ideal notebook for reporting in the field, but it’s pretty nice for a Zoom or phone interview too. (Front Page notebooks, $16.95 for a pack of two) — Neel Dhanesha

Read

I love to read and give a well-told tale of lesser-known history. This year I read The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough. First published in 1968, it’s McCullough’s debut and was sparked by him encountering, as a young journalist, archival photos captured immediately post-flood. McCullough built on a propulsive but largely forgotten story — about a booming steel town, negligence by members-only summer club patronized by the likes of Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Mellon, and a burst dam that killed thousands — by conducting interviews with survivors. When the devastating floods in Texas happened a few days after I’d finished reading, I was moved by how similar the first-hand accounts were more than a century later. (The Johnstown Flood, $18.99) — Sarah Scire

For a fun, journalism-adjacent romp, try Spy the Lie: Former CIA Officers Teach You How to Detect Deception by Philip Houston, Michael Floyd, and Susan Carnicero. I picked up the example-packed guide on a BookTok recommendation. Some of the book is specific to law enforcement or spycraft, but I was struck by how many of the exchanges analyzed were between journalists and public figures, including a Fox News interview with Dick Cheney and a fairly disastrous Anthony Weiner press conference. I got a kick out of thinking about interviews where I’d heard, for example, what the authors dub “irrelevant truth telling.” (Example: ”Did you steal it?” “If you came outside with me right now, you’d see there are Bibles in my trunk. I volunteer every week for my church.”) In my work for Nieman Lab, that might look like asking a news startup about their financial sustainability or paid subscriptions and hearing, “Our Instagram following has grown 350% in the last month.” Some of the suggestions for interviewers seeking honest answers — never forget to ask “What else?” — were highly applicable for journalists. (Spy the Lie, $18.99) — SS

Like many Americans, I was first introduced to Kurt Vonnegut in secondary school English class, when we read Welcome to the Monkey House and Slaughterhouse-Five. While I remember appreciating these books, they didn’t connect personally enough for me to seek out more of his work outside the classroom. Then, this year, the Vonnegut superfan in my life wheedled our book club into reading Vonnegut’s debut novel, Player Piano. I approached this book published in 1952 about an automated society of the future like homework, yet was repeatedly startled, amused, and unsettled by its timeliness. What do we lose when machines replace humans in the name of progress and efficiency? Who benefits; who loses out? Where does art fit in such a society? Plenty of novels older and newer tackle these questions, but Player Piano is the book I couldn’t stop thinking about this year. As a gift, you might want to pair with some chocolate or fuzzy socks for a cynicism counterweight; that being said, this is a worthwhile read and conversation starter for the journalist in your life grappling with the implications of AI for this industry and our social fabric. (Player Piano, $19) — Sophie Culpepper

I am not the person who spends the most time analyzing Ballerina Farm’s Instagram (i.e. the one belonging to mom mega-influencer, Evie Magazine cover model, and frequent profile subject Hannah Neeleman). The person who spends the most time analyzing it would probably be Sara Petersen, whose Substack on momfluencers is worth a subscribe. But I have, I’d say, more than a passing interest in BF, so I had a lot of fun reading Jo Piazza’s Everyone Is Lying To You, a #tradwife murder mystery split between the perspectives of two characters: the Neeleman-inspired “Rebecca Somers” (@BarefootMamaLove), and her college friend Lizzie, a journalist at Modern Woman magazine. I’m a huge sucker for “female journalist main character” books, especially mysteries, and this is the most fun one I read this year; if you also enjoy the genre, you could also check out A Killer Wedding by Joan O’Leary. **(Everyone Is Lying to You, $19) ** — Laura Hazard Owen

There is one newsletter that I read without fail every week, almost ritualistically: Stacy-Marie Ishmael’s The Main Event. I have come to love this newsletter the way you love the books you reread until they’re dog-eared. I’ve been subscribed for at least a few years (it is free to read, though I would pay for it), but it became more important to me with the Category 5 hurricane experience of the news in 2025. The Main Event, sent on Sunday evenings, is beautifully simple; it’s a short personal reflection from Ishmael, attributed to a text, usually a poem (occasionally a song or essay). When I’ve recommended this newsletter to friends, I’ve typically pointed to the consistently excellent poetry recommendations (YMMV, but my bar for poetry excellence is: makes me feel something!). As a reader this year, though, I would go a step further and say this newsletter has become one of the few experiences on the internet that makes me feel more human, not less? The Main Event has, at turns, provided respite from the news and looked it square in the face, but the way it does both has kept me from becoming numb. That is, the poetry recommendations have helped me process the cruelty and magnitude of certain news more deeply than straight news stories, and have also been a reminder of how big and beautiful the world can be. In our lonely, information-overloaded era, those achievements have been gifts to me, and maybe they can be for you, too! (The Main Event, free) — SC

Discontent by Spanish journalist and writer Beatriz Serrano is the best book I read all year. It’s her debut novel (translated by Mara Faye Lethem) about a young woman’s reckoning with her own existential dread. It’s deeply funny and relatable for these times. (Discontent, $17) — Hanaa’ Tameez

Play

I spent so much of my free time this year building things with AI — testing models, building agents, hacking together workflows, primarily in service of writing code. Many journalists have a difficult philosophical relationship with AI, seeing it as weak-but-cheap competition to their skillset. Which is why I encourage people to try working with AI on something that isn’t core to their identity — just to see it from the perspective most people will. For me, that’s meant coding — something I’ve done for 30-plus years, but always as a hobby, a way to feed the more computational parts of my brain.

If you want to scratch a coding itch in the new year, there are plenty of options. Google’s Gemini CLI has a generous free tier; if you’re on the $20 plans for ChatGPT or Claude, you get free access to their command-line tools Codex or Claude Code. But if you find yourself wanting to explore as much as build, I recommend the $9/month Pro subscription to Hugging Face, the beating heart of the open-source AI world.

Named for the emoji, Hugging Face is a hub for AI training, discovery, and experimentation. Other than proprietary models made by companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, it hosts effectively every AI model in the world (more than 2.2 million at last count) and provides both interfaces and compute to try them all out. (My latest obsession, of interest to few others: an incredible wave of OCR models released this year that make the conversion of old written documents into digital text far better than it used to be. As someone who’s lost many brain cells trying to decode the 19th-century handwriting on old Freedmen’s Bureau records, it’s miraculous to see a vision model read pages quickly and at scale.) A Hugging Face subscription should definitely not be the first AI product you buy — but if it turns out this technology excites you more than frightens you, it’s a great way to level up. (Hugging Face Pro subscription, $9/month) — Joshua Benton

In November, indie video game studio Sparrow Night released the newspaper simulation game News Tower. In a throwback to the print days of yesteryear, the game is set in 1930s New York City. You’re a publisher tasked with managing a newsroom and filling your struggling paper with stories that sell. No publishing business operates in a vacuum, though. In this Prohibition-era setting, you’re constantly navigating outside influence, including mafia bosses, Tammany Hall cronies, and socialites trying to buy favorable headlines. When you’re not on deadline, you’re designing your paper’s Brooklyn headquarters and state-of-the-art printing press. Are you building a muckraking outlet or the next big gossip rag? Well, that’s all up to you. (News Tower, $24.99 on Steam) — Andrew Deck

Long before there were Wordle and Connections, there was Games World of Puzzles magazine — launched in 1977, it will soon celebrate its 50th birthday. The print subscription, for $39.99 a year, includes nine issues — including both December and holiday issues to keep you stocked with puzzles through the coldest winter days. This isn’t low-rent bathroom Sudoku; many of the puzzles featured in these pages are way too weird to turn into a hit app. (Crosswords with three letters per space! Eyeball Benders! The Japanese logic puzzle Masyu!) I like that the games are ranked by difficulty level and that there are plenty of visual and art games for those of us who’d rather skip “Calculatrivia.” There are also kids-only pages and reviews of recently released games, both tabletop and electronic. (The magazine’s April issue, for instance, featured an interview with the creators of The Boston Globe’s Align.) My dorky family brings back issues plus freshly sharpened pencils in the car and on vacations. (Games World of Puzzles, $39.99 for nine print issues) — LHO

Give

Support your local news org! This one might go without saying for Nieman Lab readers, but what kind of local news reporter would I be if I didn’t put it out there? The odds are good your local news source is participating in NewsMatch through the end of the year, making a donation now more impactful (but also consider a recurring donation). I moved to Somerville earlier this year, so I’m still forming new local news habits, but have a couple orgs in mind to support (I remain a Brookline.News stan from across the river!). — SC

If ever there was a year for media philanthropy, this is it. I’ll be looking for gifts that support media organizations large and small (Nieman included!). Donate in someone’s name to your local community access station to keep civic, educational and governmental programming on the air, or get someone a Protect PBS T-shirt with beloved children’s character Arthur clenching his fist over the defunding of public media. As for stocking stuffers for your favorite reporter, there’s always a “Don’t Make Me Use My Journalist Voice” mug or a Protect Free Press magnet, button, or bumper sticker. — Samantha Henry, editor, Nieman Reports

Caffeinate

In 2025, I got into grinding my own coffee beans and experimenting with different brewing methods. The Oxo Brew Rapid Brewer has been a key part of my coffee glow-up. The brewer pumps hot or cold water into finely ground coffee to make a rich and bold concentrate that you can then dilute with water. As someone who drinks iced coffee all year long, the best part of this is that the cold brew concentrate is ready in five minutes. No more 24-hour steeping or waiting for hot coffee to cool down. Your wallet will thank you (though local coffee shops not so much). (Oxo Brew Rapid Brewer, $44.99) — HT

Give the gift of caffeine with phenomenal blends of arabica coffee beans from Palestinian Coffee Company. While the beans are sourced from coffee farms around the world, each blend is named after a different Palestinian city. First-generation Palestinian-American Emad El-Mubasher founded the company in 2022 to marry his loves of his Palestinian culture and coffee. He donates 20% of the profits to organizations that provide medical care and supplies to Palestinian children and families in Gaza and the West Bank.

I recommend trying out the starter kit that offers 12-ounce bags of three different blends. My personal favorites are Tulkarm medium roast and the Tabariya cold brew beans. (Palestinian Coffee Company Starter Kit, $37.99) — HT

For fans of flavored coffee drinks, you can’t go wrong with these Caribbean-inspired syrups. Founder Savannah Campbell pulled from different Caribbean cuisines to develop flavors like Creme Caramel, Mexican Vanilla Bean, and Coquito. My favorites are Jamaican Coconut Drop and Chocolate Rum Cream. (Caribe & Co. Flavored Coffee Syrup 6 Pack Gift Set, $26) — HT

Listen

Noise-canceling headphones have long been essential tools for me, whether I’m trying to focus on work or just drown out loud sounds on the subway. The AirPods Pro 3, however, feel like genuine magic. I cannot believe how effective they are at tuning the world out, both as a listener and a speaker; I’ve taken calls in busy coffee shops or walking down streets clogged with traffic, and the person on the other end has never noticed. They’re great for interviews — and for unwinding with a favorite album or podcast after a long day of writing. (AirPods Pro 3, $249) — ND

Organize

For years, I swore by Notion for all my story-related notes, because I liked the modularity. But making it work exactly the way I wanted took way more work than I wanted to put in, so earlier this year I tried out a new app called Capacities — and I never looked back.

Capacities is, on the surface, very similar to Notion; it also has a simple black-and-white aesthetic, and you can fill pages with all kinds of content blocks. But there are two ways Capacities stands apart: its daily notes, and its object types.

Daily notes are exactly what they sound like: a space to view your calendar and take notes on the fly. It’s great for jotting down things that don’t necessarily need their own page (though I can easily tag those notes or link them to others), and clicking on a calendar event will open a new page where I can take notes for that event. And Objects are how Capacities classifies each type of page. You can create as many object types as you want, and they can serve all kinds of uses. I have a custom object type called “stories” that pre-populates each page with, for example, a database for tracking the status of my interviews for each story; I also use the “person” and “organization” object types to build out a rolodex of sources, and Capacities allows me to see how all of my pages are connected.

This might all sound more complicated than it actually is; suffice to say that Capacities has transformed the way I track my stories, and it’s allowed me to build the personal knowledge base I’ve long dreamed of. You don’t even need the Pro plan ($9.99/month, billed annually) to use it; the company offers a generous free tier, thanks to its stated commitment that “everyone should have access to tools for building knowledge.” (Capacities, starting free) — ND

Hibernate

If you like to work from bed and are panicking about rising heating costs, a heated mattress pad is absolutely for you. Put this on your mattress, then layer your mattress protector, fitted sheets, and other bedding. Heated mattress pads are apparently way more energy-efficient than space heaters and even heated blankets because they trap the heat between your body and the mattress. The pad comes with two controls (so you and your partner don’t have to fight about melting or freezing each other) and an automatic shut-off timer. (Sunbeam Electric Heated Mattress Pad, $103) — HT

Clean

Make someone’s life easier with this reliable and durable robot vacuum from Eufy. I love these so much I actually have two — one for my bedroom and one for the common areas with high foot traffic. These vacuums are great for light, daily cleaning like picking up crumbs, pet and human hair, and outdoor dirt. They will never replace a good deep clean, but they will definitely lighten your daily mental load. Plus, this model doesn’t connect to WiFi or have cameras, so you don’t have to worry about it spying on you. (eufy Robot Vacuum 11S MAX, $280) — HT