Let’s put a cap on a difficult, but empowering, year together.

Hello and welcome back! If you don’t remember, this is Productivity, Without Privilege, and I’m still very much Alan Henry, your host for these newsletter-ey festivities. By the way, my book, Seen, Heard, and Paid: The New Work Rules for the Marginalized, makes a great holiday gift! And if you’d like to include something on your list for me this year, I’d be grateful if you sent me a tip or subscribed to my Patreon. 

A few years ago, I wrote a newsletter with the same title, "Christmastime in Harlem." When I wrote that edition back in 2021, I wanted to offer a little hope for the holidays, and I think we could all use a little hope right now.

But of course, before that, all my wishes for a happy holiday season, from me to you.

I hope you’re all doing well, staying safe, and keeping healthy this holiday season. Whatever this time of year means to you, I hope you manage to eke out some joy and togetherness with whomever you like.

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This has been a hard year, especially for our friends and family in marginalized communities. We can’t sit here at the end of 2025 and pretend that we’re in any kind of better place than we were this time last year, where we were mostly hoping that maybe things wouldn’t be as bad as they turned out to be. But the one thing that persists, and one thing that I still believe, is that there are a lot of very good people out there doing very good things for the people who need them, and those people deserve our attention, our appreciation, and our energy. 

If you can get involved with them, or with other organizations seeking to provide relief to the afflicted and to afflict the powerful, you absolutely should. They deserve your dollars and your hours far more than any news agency that profits off of anger or any politician texting you for money without voting to earn it. Consider the food pantries, the family farms, the small businesses, the community ICE rapid-response groups, the indie developers building tools to keep us all safe, the police watchers, and the mutual aid posts on your timeline this year. A few dollars from your pockets to their accounts will go much, much further today than they did last year, I promise you. 

Additionally, make sure to make some time this holiday season to look out for yourself, too. This time of year usually has us scrambling to meet our usual obligations, as well as fulfilling the holiday obligations we have for others or because we think we should. That’s fine, but make sure some of that energy is directed to you and your needs. I said this back in 2021. I’ll say it again: You are more than the sum of your parts. You are more than your output, more than the things you create, more than the things other people need you for or demand of you. You are more, and you deserve more. 

You are more than the likes you get on social media (trust me, I have to tell myself this all the time) or the views you get on a piece you published. You’re more than the number of bylines you have, or how prestigious those outlets are. You’re more than your paycheck, your job title, the people you sleep with, the car you drive, or any of the other status symbols that our society tells you measure your value as an individual. 

Your value comes from inside you, in your head and your heart, in your dreams and your goals, your passions and your aspirations, and the way you share that light with others. It’s intrinsic, and no one can ever take it from you, although by god they’ll try. 

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Now then, it’s been a few years since I started Productivity, Without Privilege, and I’ve learned a lot along the way. I’ve also heard from a number of you that you appreciate the tips in here, the links to interesting stories, and well, my generally unfiltered take on the state of media and society. Thank you! There aren’t a lot of spaces I have to safely share those thoughts, and I’m grateful for this one. 

However, that said, I’d love to know what you find most valuable and interesting in this newsletter as we move into our fifth year of doing this. So, I've put together a little survey for you! If you have a few moments, click here to take it and leave me a little feedback. I promise it won’t take long, it’s only a couple of questions and two text fields where you can elaborate (or not, they’re not mandatory, promise.) 

Investigating a Possible Scammer in Journalism’s AI Era, by Nicholas Hune-Brown: You may have seen this story going around already, but I wanted to share it just in case you haven’t. Partially because I know that I have a lot of freelance writers who subscribe to this newsletter, but also because I want everyone to know what’s going through assignment editors’ minds right now when they review pitches. It used to be just about “is this a good story?” and “is this a fit for my outlet?” but now it’s “can I trust this writer?” and “was this pitch—and will the subsequent story—be written by AI?” This is the kind of behavior that makes life harder for all writers who want the space and opportunity to tell their stories. For all of you who simply want to write about true things that matter to you, even if you would never use AI for a story, please refrain from using AI for your pitch as well. Editors are now on the lookout for it, and if your pitch or prior writing doesn’t pass the AI sniff test, it’ll never get published. 

What Do We Lose When Black Women In Journalism Disappear? Everything. by Ebonie Walker: As I’m writing this, I just learned about layoffs at Rolling Stone, which, of course, are impacting Black journalists more than anyone else. It’s hard to see, even though I’ve known as long as I’ve been in this field that journalism is inherently hostile to Black voices, and I’ve seen that hostility firsthand multiple times. But this piece by Ebonie Walker is a must-read, reminding us that virtually every major media publisher, from The New York Times Company to Conde Nast and everyone in between, is rapidly and gleefully backtracking on all of their promises from 2020 to diversify their newsrooms and make their coverage more representative of the communities they claim to care about. 

There’s a conversation to be had about how white women have been the biggest beneficiaries of diversity programs (which I touched on in my book), but regardless, the result is that it’s been devastating to the amazing journalists who are working hard to cover their beats and write incredible, award-winning stories, not just stories that people consider “Black stories.” Read the whole piece, share my anger and disappointment. 

Tell Students the Truth About American History, by Clint Smith: I’ve had this one in my back pocket for a little while. I’m not a huge fan of The Atlantic, although I know some great people there, but this piece is well done. How can you expect accountability and engagement with civic society if we won’t even tell our citizens the truth about how our nation was founded, for whom, by whom, and what happened to build it into the society we live in today? 

A long time ago I started referring to the version of American history that we’re taught in schools—the one supplemented by flashy films and watered-down after school specials—as “American Mythology,” or the self-constructed version of our history that paints the existence and founding of the United States as a triumph for truth, justice, self-determination, and of course, for humanity. That version of our history ignores the genocide of Native Americans as well as the abject horror of chattel slavery, and how both of those things are intrinsic to American culture and informed its violent, colonial behavior in the years after its founding, through the Civil War, and through to the present. But we live in an America where even acknowledging the mistakes and injustices of the past means that you “hate America,” and before anything in this country will change, that needs to change first.

Before Thanksgiving, I bought myself two new pillows for my bed. Nice ones, at that - they were probably too expensive for my budget, but if there’s anything I live by, it’s putting money where your time goes, something my friend and former editor Jason Chen wrote about over 10 years ago. He called it “The Comfort Principle,” and reminded folks that it may seem frivolous to spend thousands of dollars on a mattress or an office chair until you realize exactly how much of your life you spend sleeping, or sitting at your desk working. 

So, getting back to the pillows I bought a few months ago, I noticed some pain in my left arm because of how I was sleeping. The position wasn’t really the problem; it was the fact that my pillow barely supported my head while I slept, and my arm was really what my head was resting on while I slept. So I decided that it was time to get rid of all of my old pillows that I’d had kicking around my apartment and start fresh. You don’t have to spend a bunch of money as I did, but I did end up buying the top pick from my friends at Wirecutter, the Nest Bedding Easy Breather, which arrived while I was away over Thanksgiving. I’m not saying this because I think you should buy them specifically; I just want to avoid the inevitable “Hey, I got new pillows,” which is usually followed by “Oh yeah? What kind?” and I don’t want to leave you hanging.

Anyway, when I got home, I opened them up, let them inflate, fearing that I’d have to wait for them to offgas or stop smelling or whatever, but to my delight (and as mentioned in the Wirecutter story), they smelled fine as soon as I opened them. Either way, the next night I changed the sheets, put the new pillows on the bed, and slept like a baby. No regrets, no complaints. 

Buy yourself a gift this holiday season. Preferably something that makes your life tangibly better in some real way. It doesn’t have to be a new mattress, desk, office chair, or even two pricey new pillows. It can be something small, like a subscription to a streaming service you’ve been meaning to try, or a book you’ve been wanting to read. It can be a trinket you’ve had your eye on, or a hoodie to keep you warm over the cold weather months. Whatever makes the most sense for you. But make sure you don’t overlook yourself in this time of the year, when we’re focused so heavily on both wrapping up the year and looking out for other people. Remember, it’s your responsibility to care for yourself, because no one else is guaranteed to do it. 

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That’ll do it for this Productivity, Without Privilege! If you enjoyed the newsletter, consider supporting me by dropping me a tip or subscribing to my Patreon for early access to this newsletter, as well as some other treats. I’m making some tweaks to the Patreon to offer more benefits to the tiers, so keep an eye out for that! Take care of yourselves, be kind to each other (especially right now), and I’ll see you back here soon.