🎅📰 Holiday Hangovers, Data Deep Dives and Christmas Classics

Merry post-Christmas Friday, Benchies!

We hope your Christmas week was filled with good food, a bit of rest and maybe a break from your inbox. As we settle into that quiet stretch between holidays, this week’s newsletter brings together stories that reflect both reflection and forward motion.

We’re spotlighting reporting on U.S. infrastructure ahead of the World Cup, tools helping local newsrooms publish richer stories, and seasonal reads that use multimedia to explore tradition, music and celebration. 

Together, these stories show how thoughtful reporting can make sense of both the practical and the festive.

Pour yourself a leftover cup of cocoa and dive in!

Here is our featured content this week:

🚧⚽ Is the US Ready for the World Cup? Our Roads Might Not Be.

This interesting piece looks at what the 2026 World Cup could mean for U.S. transportation, arguing that outdated road systems and uneven transit options may not match the scale of the event. The piece frames the tournament as a stress test for infrastructure — and a reminder that moving fans, workers and media safely and efficiently is part of hosting. Check it out!

🧰📰 How Hearst’s DevHub is helping local reporters tell richer stories through data and design

Hearst’s DevHub is building reusable templates and support systems so local newsrooms can publish interactive projects without deep coding experience. In our Q&A, fellow Darryl Laiu describes maintaining React-based templates, adapting one newsroom’s work for other markets, and pairing centralized data work with local reporting context. Read more

Cool Stuff Corner: What are we reading?

🥄🦃 6 classic Christmas side dishes disappeared from American tables

Fox News rounds up holiday side dishes it says have faded from many Christmas spreads, spotlighting older, retro staples — including gelatin molds and other throwback favorites — and tracing how tastes and convenience trends have reshaped what shows up next to the main course. 

🎄📸 (NYT) Christmas 2025 photos

A global photo essay from The New York Times captures how communities around the world marked Christmas celebrations and the season in 2025, from midnight Mass and candlelit services to public gatherings and fun moments. The images reflect a wide range of traditions, settings and moods, showing how the holiday season is observed across culture during a year shaped by ongoing global challenges.

From the Vault 🏛️

🎧🎄 How Gizmodo quantified the Christmas spirit using Spotify data

This story dug out from our archive explains how Gizmodo used Spotify listening data to map where Christmas music spikes — and when — creating a playful proxy for “holiday spirit.” The story focuses on the reporting choices behind the analysis and how a familiar dataset can be turned into an approachable seasonal story. Have a look!

🎤📈 How The Pudding analyzed the “diva-ness” of national anthem performances

In this story you can check out the breakdown of how The Pudding built a “Diva Score” by comparing how singers’ renditions of the U.S. national anthem diverge from the standard melody. The interactive lets readers hear differences phrase by phrase and see which performances stick close to tradition — and which take the most stylistic liberties.

That's all we've got for this week! Thanks for reading, and let us know if there's anything you'd like to see in these newsletters or in our coverage at [email protected].

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