Time Person of the Year
Person of the Year (called Man of the Year or Woman of the Year until 1999)[1] is an annual issue of the American news magazine and website Time featuring a person, group, idea, or object that "for better or for worse ... has done the most to influence the events of the year".[2] The editors select the featured subject in a "secretive ... process", though the Time website or a partner organization also runs an annual online reader's poll that has no effect on the selection.[3][4]
Person of the Year
Background[edit]
The tradition of selecting a "Man of the Year" began privately in 1927, with Time editors contemplating the news makers of the year after a series of "slow news days" before New Year's Day.[4] The idea originally focused on a Man of the Week before it was decided to use Lindbergh to represent the predominant story of 1927, with the magazine listing him as Man of the Year being published in early 1928.[4]
The idea was also an attempt to remedy the editorial embarrassment earlier that year of not having aviator Charles Lindbergh on its cover following his historic transatlantic flight.[4] By the end of the year, it was decided that a cover story featuring Lindbergh as the Man of the Year would serve both purposes.[5]
Before the online poll was instituted, "readers were invited to weigh in by mail."[4]
Selection[edit]
National leaders[edit]
Since the list began, every serving president of the United States has been a Man or Person of the Year at least once, with the exceptions of Calvin Coolidge (in office at the time of the first issue), Herbert Hoover (the subsequent president), and Gerald Ford (the only president never to have been elected to the office of president or vice president). Most were named Man or Person of the Year either the year they were elected or while they were in office; the only one to be given the title before being elected was Dwight D. Eisenhower, in 1944, as Supreme Commander of the Allied Invasion Force, eight years before his first election. He subsequently received the title again in 1959 while in office. Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first chosen US president and is the only person to have received the title three times, first as president-elect (1932) and later as the incumbent president (1934 and 1941).
All countries' heads of state or government to have been chosen as Man, Woman, or Person of the Year (arranged in chronological order by country name, from the most frequently selected) are: