Second Draft for Times Person of the Year

For connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them, for creating a new system of exchanging information and for changing how we live our lives, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is TIME's 2010 Person of the Year. Before him, it was given to various American presidents, such as Barak Obama and Franklin D. Roosevelt. It has also been given to groundbreaking scientists, such as Einstein and David Ho. People mostly ASSUME that this award is given to a person who has donated to the development of humanity or society. However, this is not always true. In fact, this title, often called an "award," is given to an individual or group who has had the biggest effect on the year’s news. Case in point, it was even given to Stalin and Hitler.

In 2010, there was a controversy over awarding the title, since there were two candidates, Mark Zuckerberg and Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. In 2010 Julian Assange, was awarded the TIMES reader’s choice of person of the year and Zuckerberg was awarded the title. Even though Assange had received more readers’ vote than Zuckerberg (Zuckerberg came in the tenth place while Assange got the first in the vote) TIMES had chosen Zuckerberg as the issue maker of the year, unlike what many thought. Through this incident I got to think that even though the title TIMES Person of the Year has a lot of glory, and fame, I think the title is not worth as many people think and that it should not have a special meaning in it.

     First, this award is also based on the magazines opinion, not the readers. As in 2010'S Person of the Year choice, there has been a lot of controversy over it. Even though Assange had received 20 times more the popular vote than Zuckerberg, and took the first place in the popular vote, the honor was given to Zuckerberg who was ranked tenth. Assange had an average rating of 92 compared to Zuckerberg’s rating of 52. However, the title of TIMES Person of the Year was given to Zuckerberg while Assange was just given the title of Reader’s Choice of TIMES Person of the year. According to the TIMES, they say that the choice is based on the magazines opinion of who had created a big issue rather than the voting of the subscribers. Even though, when most people thought that Assange was the biggest issue maker, TIMES chose that Zuckerberg was the one who created headlines. Since TIMES is worldwide magazine and there are lots of subscribers who tend to think that Zuckerberg as the person who created most issue by reading the magazine, while people’s choice was Assange.

To add, this award is not proper from its origin. It was created in 1927, to write contemplating stories that are newsworthy during a slow news week. In short, it was created because there was no interesting news that would attract reader’s attentions. It was a supplement for a week that would not have issues that people would be drawn to. Another fact is that it was poorly chosen from the first Person of the Year. The first TIMES Person of the year was awarded to Charles Lindbergh, who made a historic trans-Atlantic flight. He could have been an issue maker of the year at the time, but can it be said that he was the best choice? It was awarded to him, because the TIMES magazine had missed the chance to publish him on the front cover. The TIMES magazine had created it, not on the good purpose of looking back one year, but they were embarrassed and humiliated for not publishing about Lindbergh. There could have been a person in 1927 that had created more issue rather than Lindbergh. Also because the Person of the Year, other important news such as political issues in Libya have been pushed out of the spot light. I personally think that crisis in Libya is more important than mentioning the achievement of Zuckerberg.

The most important thing is that it differs from every person to person, who they thought was the biggest issue maker of the year. For instance, Zuckerberg couldn’t be the biggest issue maker in every country. In some countries like Liberia or Egypt, for example, Zuckerberg likely won’t have much of an impact. People’s interests are different. Some are more interested in politics and can think that some policy was the biggest issue of the year. Some are more interested in the field of science or mechanics and think that the scientist or some engineers should be the man of the year. There might be even some people who think that they are the biggest issue! The point here is that the biggest issue maker differs from person to person. I would say for me, it was that Mr. Jeon Kwang Jin got married. Nobody in our school thought that he would get married with Lee Na young teacher and for a while it was the biggest issue of our school and not Facebook.

I think that TIME'S Person of the Year is not worthy as most people think it is. Its origin is somewhat not worth the glory, because it was material to publish for a slow news week. Also, it does not represent what most people think since the publishers chose who they think made the most headlines in the news. To add, it cannot represent fully who millions of people think was the biggest issue maker of the year.