Time Magazine’s Person of the Year

A few days ago, longtime Time magazine correspondent and essayist Lance Morrow lamented in the Wall Street Journal that his former employer’s Man of the Year selection announcement was once a much bigger deal:

Morrow wrote seven Man of the Year cover stories during his career with the magazine. He’s right; for quite a few years now, the magazine’s selections have either been so obvious that they weren’t interesting, or so odd and tough to defend that it might as well be renamed, “the person whose face on the cover we think will sell the most copies” or “the person who is most interesting to a largely liberal or progressive staff.” Was the Occupy Wall Street movement really more consequential than the Tea Party movement? Was Greta Thunberg really the most influential figure in the news in 2019? In the year 2020, were Joe Biden and Kamala Harris more consequential than those who developed the vaccines against Covid-19? (Or more consequential than, say, the staff of the Wuhan Institute of Virology?) It seems kind of funny that Elon Musk was named the magazine’s man of the year last year, when Musk has been even more consequential and heavily covered this year.

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Jim Geraghty

Jim Geraghty is the senior political correspondent of National Review.

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A few days ago, longtime Time magazine correspondent and essayist Lance Morrow lamented in the Wall Street Journal that his former employer’s Man of the Year selection announcement was once a much bigger deal:

Morrow wrote seven Man of the Year cover stories during his career with the magazine. He’s right; for quite a few years now, the magazine’s selections have either been so obvious that they weren’t interesting, or so odd and tough to defend that it might as well be renamed, “the person whose face on the cover we think will sell the most copies” or “the person who is most interesting to a largely liberal or progressive staff.” Was the Occupy Wall Street movement really more consequential than the Tea Party movement? Was Greta Thunberg really the most influential figure in the news in 2019? In the year 2020, were Joe Biden and Kamala Harris more consequential than those who developed the vaccines against Covid-19? (Or more consequential than, say, the staff of the Wuhan Institute of Virology?) It seems kind of funny that Elon Musk was named the magazine’s man of the year last year, when Musk has been even more consequential and heavily covered this year.