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Person of the Year: Accolade or Accusation?
There’s More to You Than There Is to You
1927.
The year was 1927 and Time Magazine realized that they had failed to put Charles Lindbergh on the cover, despite the fact that Lindbergh had made his historic flight in May of that year.
The editors decided they could correct the error by putting him on the cover and calling him “Man of the Year.” It was a way to cover their mistake.
At the time, the editors agreed that all they wanted to do was represent someone who had impacted the news of the year so heavily that they deserved special representation. What they were decidedly not trying to do was bestow an accolade upon someone that would elevate their achievements in an award sense.
They wanted to note someone who had impacted the news. Someone who had changed the way we talk about things. Someone who marked the news of the year. Okay, fair. They accomplished that. This was not a Nobel prize. This was not to be a Kennedy Center honor. Just noting that the personality had been a media figure.
The single criterion for becoming Time’s “person of the year” is as follows:
“the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the…
