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 Time website or a partner organization also runs an annual online reader's poll that has no effect on the selection, although no poll was held in 2023 or 2024.[3][4]
Background
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" leading up to 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
National leaders
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 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:
Before 1999, four women were granted the title as individuals: three as "Woman of the Year"—Wallis Simpson (1936), Queen Elizabeth II (1952), and Corazon Aquino (1986)—and one as half of "Man and Wife of the Year", Soong Mei-ling (jointly with Chiang Kai-shek) in 1937.[6] "American Women" were recognized as a group in 1975. Other classes of people recognized comprise both men and women, such as "Hungarian Freedom Fighters" (1956), "U.S. Scientists" (1960), "The Inheritors" (1966), "The Middle Americans" (1969), "The American Soldier" (1950 and 2003), "You" (2006), "The Protester" (2011), and "Ebola Fighters" (2014). However, the title on the magazine remained "Man of the Year" for both the 1956 "Hungarian Freedom Fighter" and the 1966 "Twenty-five and Under" editions which both featured a woman standing behind a man, and "Men of the Year" on the 1960 "U.S. Scientists" edition which exclusively featured men on its cover. It was not until the 1969 edition on "The Middle Americans" that the title embraced "Man and Woman of the Year".
Since 2022, Time has awarded a separate "Women of the Year" title to a number of women each year, in a similar fashion to Time 100. [9]
Groups and non-humans
Despite the name, the title is not just granted to individuals. Pairs of people such as married couples and political opponents, classes of people, and inanimate objects have all been selected for the special year-end issue.
Despite the magazine's frequent statements to the contrary, the designation is often regarded as an honor and spoken of as an award or prize, simply based on many previous selections of admirable people.[15] However, Time points out that controversial figures such as Adolf Hitler (1938); Joseph Stalin (1939 and 1942); Nikita Khrushchev (1957); and Ayatollah Khomeini (1979) have also been granted the title for their impact on events.[16] Nevertheless, as a result of the public backlash it received from the American audience for naming Khomeini Man of the Year in 1979, the magazine's editors have since shied away from using figures who are controversial in the United States, fearing reductions in sales or advertising revenue.[17]
Time's Person of the Year for 2001, immediately following the September 11 attacks, was Rudy Giuliani, who was then mayor of New York City.[18] The stated rules of selection—the individual or group of individuals who have had the bigger influence on the year's events—made Osama bin Laden the more likely choice that year; however, Giuliani was selected for symbolizing the American response to the attacks, in the same way that Albert Einstein was selected Person of the Century for representing a century of scientific exploration and wonder instead of Adolf Hitler, who was arguably a stronger candidate.[19] The selections were ultimately based on, as the magazine describes it, "who they believed had a stronger influence on history and who represented either the year or the century the most."[citation needed]
Withdrawn and alleged selections
In 1941, the fictional elephant Dumbo from Walt Disney's animated film of the same name was selected to be "Mammal of the Year", and a cover was created showing the title character in a formal portrait style. However, the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7 pre-empted the cover. The U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt was named Man of the Year for a record third time, although Dumbo's Mammal of the Year profile still appeared on the inside pages of the magazine.[20]
Filmmaker Michael Moore claims that director Mel Gibson cost him the opportunity to be Person of the Year alongside Gibson in 2004. Moore's controversial political documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 became the highest-grossing documentary of all time the same year Gibson's The Passion of the Christ became a box-office success and also caused significant controversy. Moore said in an interview "I got a call right after the '04 election from an editor from Time Magazine. He said,' Time Magazine has picked you and Mel Gibson to be Time's Person of the Year to put on the cover, Right and Left, Mel and Mike. The only thing you have to do is pose for a picture with each other. And do an interview together.' I said 'OK.' They call Mel up, he agrees. They set the date and time in LA. I'm to fly there. He's flying from Australia. Something happens when he gets home ... Next thing, Mel calls up and says, 'I'm not doing it. I've thought it over and it is not the right thing to do.' So they put Bush on the cover."[21]
U.S. president Donald Trump claimed on Twitter in November 2017 that Time editors had told him he would "probably" be named Person of the Year for a second time, conditional on an interview and photo shoot, which he had refused. Time denied that they had made any such promises or conditions to Trump, who was named a runner-up.[22]
Laval was first appointed Prime Minister of France in 1931. He was popular in the American press at the time for opposing the Hoover Moratorium, a temporary freeze on World War I debt payments that was disliked in both France and the US.[23]
In 1933, Johnson was appointed director of the National Recovery Administration. US President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave him the task of bringing industry, labor and government together to create codes of "fair practices" and set prices.
Soong was wife of Chiang Kai-shek from 1927 until his death in 1975, and was active in rallying support for the Republic of China in the US. Addressed as Madame Chiang Kai-Shek by the magazine, she was recognized together with her husband as "Man & Wife of the Year".[6]
Roosevelt was President of the United States in 1941 during the attack on Pearl Harbor, declaration of war against Japan and resulting entry of the United States into World War II. The editors had already chosen Dumbo as their "Mammal of the Year" before the Pearl Harbor attack, but quickly changed it to Roosevelt.[20]
Truman was elected in his own right as President of the United States in 1948, which is considered to be one of the greatest election upsets in American history.[25][26][27]
Proclaimed as the "Man of the half-century", Churchill had led Britain and the Allies to victory in WWII. In 1949, Churchill was Leader of the Opposition.
In 1953, Adenauer was re-elected as Chancellor of West Germany. Adenauer was overseeing the reconstruction of Germany and the Economic Miracle, had successfully restored relations with Germany's wartime enemies in the West, and was working towards European integration.[28]
Curtice was President of General Motors (GM) from 1953 to 1958. In 1955, GM sold five million vehicles and became the first corporation to earn US$1 billion in a single year.[29]
In 1957, Khrushchev consolidated his leadership of the Soviet Union, surviving a plot to dismiss him by Stalinist members within the Presidium, and leading the Soviet Union into the Space Race with the launch of Sputnik 1.
Eisenhower was President of the United States from 1953 to 1961. In 1959, Eisenhower arranged the state visit by Nikita Khrushchev to the United States and toured several countries, becoming the first US president to visit India.[30]
Time claimed in 1960 "science is at the apogee of its power for good or evil", although it noted that "the 15 men [on the cover] include two or three whose greatest work is probably behind them".
The cover and piece spotlights the following scientists:
Representing a generation of American men and women, aged 25 and under – the Baby Boom generation, who in 1966 made up nearly half the population and were influential both in the counterculture of the 1960s and as drafted soldiers in the Vietnam War. The face most prominently seen on the cover representing the generation was that of Thomas M. McLaughlin.[32][33]
Johnson was President of the United States from 1963 to 1969. Time noted that it had been a year of setbacks and failures for Johnson, with race riots across the US, deepening involvement in the Vietnam War, and the Dump Johnson movement within his own party.[34]
In 1968, the American crew of Apollo 8 (William Anders, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell) became the first humans to travel beyond low Earth orbit, orbiting the Moon and paving the way for the first human Moon landings in 1969.
As President of the United States, Nixon visited China in 1972, the first U.S. president to do so. Nixon later secured the SALT I pact with the Soviet Union before being re-elected in one of the largest landslide election victories in American history.
Faisal, King of Saudi Arabia, was acknowledged in the wake of the 1973–1974 oil crisis, which arose when Saudi Arabia withdrew its oil from world markets to protest Western support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War.
Highlighting the successes of the American feminist movement and "the status of the everyday, usually anonymous woman, who moved into the mainstream of jobs, ideas and policy making".
The cover and piece spotlights the following women:
Andropov, as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was a critic of the Strategic Defense Initiative and tried to revive stagnating Soviet economy. Andropov was hospitalized in August 1983 and died in 1984.
As general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and leader of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev oversaw perestroika and glasnost political reforms in 1987, aimed at liberalizing Soviet society.
Starr, a lawyer investigating various figures within the Clinton administration, published his Starr Report in 1998, opening the door for the impeachment of Bill Clinton.
Represented by Cynthia Cooper, Coleen Rowley, and Sherron Watkins. In 2001, Watkins uncovered accounting irregularities in the financial reports of Enron, testifying before Congressional committees the following year. In 2002, Cooper exposed a $3.8 billion fraud at WorldCom. At the time, this was the largest incident of accounting fraud in U.S. history. In 2002, Rowley, an FBI agent, gave testimony about the FBI's mishandling of information related to the September 11 attacks of 2001.
In 2008, Obama was elected President of the United States, defeating John McCain to become the first African-American President of the United States in January 2009.
Founder of the social-networking website Facebook. In 2010, Facebook passed half a billion users but was involved in privacy disputes, and Zuckerberg had been the subject of the Oscar-winning biographical film The Social Network.
Recognizing the historic significance of many grassroots protests across the world during that year, such as the ongoing Arab Spring which started in Tunisia and those against austerity measures in Greece and later in Spain, against corruption in India, against the drug war in Mexico, for education in Chile, for social justice in Israel, as well as the riots in England, the anti-government protests in Russia and the emerging global Occupy movement[86]
"Ebola fighters" refers to health care workers who helped stop the spread of the Ebola virus during the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa, including not only doctors and nurses, but also ambulance attendants, burial parties and others.[93]
Those represented on the covers included
Jerry Brown, the medical director at the Eternal Love Winning Africa Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia,[94][95]
The people who spoke out against sexual abuse and harassment, including the figureheads of the American MeToo movement. Represented on the cover by strawberry picker Isabel Pascual (pseudonym), lobbyist Adama Iwu, actress Ashley Judd, software engineer Susan Fowler, singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, and a sixth woman, a hospital worker who wished to remain anonymous and whose face cannot be seen.
The feature also specifically spotlights, in order:
Maria Ressa, editor of the Philippine news website Rappler, who was indicted for her critical coverage of Rodrigo Duterte's controversially violent policies;
In 2020, Biden and Harris were elected President and Vice President of the United States respectively, defeating incumbent President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.[131] In January 2021, Harris became the first woman, first African American, and first Asian American vice president.
CEO of Tesla, Inc., founder and CEO of SpaceX. In 2021, Musk had become the richest person in the world and first person reported to have a net worth of over 300 billion US dollars. Recognized for the achievements of stated companies in the prior years, including the first all-civilian orbital flight, as well as his public image and controversies.[134]
Singer-songwriter whose 2023–2024 Eras Tour became the highest-grossing concert tour of all time.[139] The tour had a significant cultural and economic impact in 2023. Time described Swift as the first Person of the Year to be recognized for their "achievement in the arts". Swift was also on the 2017 Person of the Year cover, called "The Silence Breakers". She was noted by the magazine as the first woman to appear twice on a Person of the Year cover.[140][141]
In 2024, Trump was re-elected President of the United States, defeating incumbent Vice President Kamala Harris and becoming the second president to win two nonconsecutive terms after Grover Cleveland in 1892.[142][143]
Every year, in addition to the main Person of the Year, Time (sometimes alongside a partner company) acknowledges impactful people or groups in other categories. This is a relatively recent practice, beginning in 1998 when Mark McGwire was awarded the title of Hero of the Year and becoming a regular event in 2018 with the re-introduction of the Heroes of the Year award.
Heroes of the Year was joined by Athlete of the Year, CEO of the Year, Entertainer of the Year and Guardians of the Year in 2019, Kid of the Year in 2020, Breakthrough of the Year, Dreamer of the Year, Icon of the Year and Innovator of the Year in 2022, Team of the Year in 2023 and Community of the Year in 2024.
In line with the introduction of these new categories, Time has expanded their annual Person of the Year private event to include and celebrate their recipients. The event, titled A Year in TIME beginning in 2023, has been held at Plaza Hotel since 2022.[145][146]A Year in TIME typically features interviews, speeches and performances from some of the categories' winners, as well as winners of other Time awards. Some of these are then posted to Time's official YouTube channel.
Athlete of the Year
Athlete of the Year was awarded in partnership with Oura Health in 2021[147] and LG in 2022.[148]
The Tham Luang cave rescue took place during June and July 2018, where a group of 12 boys and their junior soccer team's assistant coach Ekkapol Chantawong, who had been trapped in a cave for over two weeks, were successfully located and rescued through an operation involving over 10,000 people. Time's corresponding article highlights the heroic actions of Chantawong, Narongsak Osottanakorn (the governor of Chiang Rai province at the time and overseer of the rescue operation),[181]John Volanthen and Rick Stanton (two divers who first found the group alive),[182] Samarn Kunan (the rescue's only immediate casualty) and Richard Harris (the anesthesiologist and cave diver who played a crucial role in the rescue).
Shaw disarmed a gunman during the Nashville Waffle House shooting on April 22, 2018, preventing the death toll from going above 4, and started a GoFundMe campaign the following day which went on to raise over $240,000 for the families of the shooting's 4 fatalities.
Brown, a hospital chaplain at Feather River Hospital in Paradise, California, assisted with the evacuation of the hospital during Camp Fire and personally drove three immobile patients out of town, successfully getting them to a hospital in Chico after hours of potentially fatal road delays.
Shults was the pilot of Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 on April 17, 2018, who, along with her first officer Darren Lee Ellisor, saved the lives of 143 following the failure of an engine which had fragments break off that damaged other parts of the plane and killed 1 passenger.
On May 26, 2018, Gassama scaled four floors of an apartment building in Paris in under a minute, saving the life of a four-year-old boy dangling from a balcony and drawing comparisons to Spider-Man.
Time's corresponding article discusses the actions of those who saved Notre-Dame's sacred treasures during the fire on April 15, 2019 (particularly Antoine-Marie Préaut, a conservator of Paris's historic monuments, and Laurent Prades, Notre-Dame's operational director), the ~400 firefighters who combatted the fire, and those who had begun preparing for the cathedral's reconstruction.
Kyote, a nine-year-old resident of Napa, California, used his allowance to pay off his grade's $74 lunch debt. His mother posted about it on social media and the story went viral, starting a wider national movement against school lunch debt.[184] As a result, Kyote's school district reversed their lunch debt policy and a law was passed in California banning "lunch shaming" (a term for giving worse food to students with debt).
Smith, a 21-year-old student in Beaumont, Texas, was the sole employee trapped in a hotel alongside 90 guests for over 30 hours during Tropical Storm Imelda. He stayed awake during the whole ordeal, and was assisted by guests in making dinner and providing stranded truckers with food and water.
On November 11, 2019, Chamberlain, a bus driver in Waukesha, Wisconsin, saw a two-year-old girl and her six-year-old brother alone in temperatures below 20 °F (−7 °C) near a busy intersection. She brought them on board her bus, warmed them up and stayed with them until their grandmother showed up alongside police officers.
On May 19, 2019, Lowe, a teacher at Parkrose High School in Portland, Oregon, saw a student armed with a shotgun and successfully disarmed him, preventing his suicide and a school shooting. Immediately after, he gave the student a sympathetic hug and provided him with comforting words.
Phillips, who runs a dog refuge in Nassau, Bahamas, managed to protect the refuge's 82 dogs, alongside 15 other dogs, from Hurricane Dorian in her own home. During the week following the hurricane, she sent 68 of those dogs to homes and rescue groups in the United States after her story went viral there.
Time's corresponding article highlights the work done by volunteer firefighters during the 2019–20 Australian bushfire season, including three that died on the job.
Chua and Hung, co-owners of the Beng Who Cooks food stall in Singapore, committed to delivering free food to those who could not afford it during COVID-19 lockdowns from April to June 2020. In total, they spent $11,000 on ~2,500 free meals.
Following the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, Dailey, a newspaper deliveryman in Mercer County, New Jersey, began a new service of dropping off goods free of charge. During the rest of the year, he, with the help of his family, supplied over 140 homes and conducted over 1000 grocery runs in his local area.
On June 1, 2020, during the George Floyd protests in Washington, D.C., Dubey provided refuge in his home to ~70 protestors who were being barricaded and pepper-sprayed by police, even letting them stay overnight to avoid curfew breaches.
Pastor Reshorna Fitzpatrick and Bishop Derrick Fitzpatrick[189]
In April 2020, Reshorna and Derrick Fitzpatrick, a married couple who run Stone Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Chicago, began providing ~300 food boxes per week to people who became unemployed following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. They expanded their operation throughout the year, obtaining a supply of fresh produce from a local Black- and women-led nonprofit farm, providing hot soup every week and giving out supplies such as face masks and hand sanitizer.
After the death of Mahsa Amini on September 16, 2022, who was arrested for allegedly wearing her hijab improperly and later died after she had been —according to eyewitnesses— severely beaten by religious morality police officers, massive global protests began.[192] Initial protests, mostly led by women, demanded an end to the mandatory hijab law, which has been in place since the 1979 Islamic revolution.[193] According to Iran Human Rights, at least 481 protesters including 64 minors have been killed in these protests as of January 9, 2023.[194]
Recognising the actions of frontline health workers around the world that helped contain and reduce the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Fauci was the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the time, and is credited with being a pivotal figure in the United States' fight against the pandemic.
Porche-Bennett-Bey, Assa Traoré and racial justice organizers[198]
Recognising the actions of those who organized racial justice movements such as the George Floyd protests. Bennett-Bey, a resident of Kenosha, Wisconsin, gained media attention for her activism following the shooting of Jacob Blake. Traoré is an activist and the sister of Adama Traoré, a black French man who died in police custody in 2016. The police officers accused of brutality were cleared of blame on May 29, 2020, triggering a new wave of protests against police brutality in solidarity with the at the time ongoing George Floyd protests.
Online poll
From 2010 to 2022, Time held an annual online poll for the readers to vote for who they believed to be the Person of the Year. While many mistakenly believed the winner of the poll to be the Person of the Year, the title, as mentioned above, is decided by the editors of Time.[199]
An online reader's choice poll was also held in 1998, with professional wrestler Mick Foley and murdered college student Matthew Shepard as the top vote-getters, although the final result is unknown.[213][74]
^ abcdeRothman, Lily (2023). Jacobs, Sam; Rothman, Lily; Benedict, Julie Blume; Cassidy, Catherine (eds.). "How Person of the Year Came to Be". Time. pp. 1–2.
^Time (2002), "Person of the Year: 75th Anniversary Celebration", p. 1.
^ abLevenstein, Joan (December 16, 2006). "Mme Chiang Kai-Shek: 1937". Time. Archived from the original on April 4, 2023. Retrieved December 7, 2016.
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