A comment from reddit might explain the farce: "For those curious, I have a friend who worked at Time magazine for many decades and I asked him once how they c

A comment from reddit might explain the farce: "For those curious, I have a friend who worked at Time magazine for many decades and I asked him once how they choose the Person of the Year. He said that while on paper they claim to ask everyone who works there and such, in actuality a board of editors/managers/etc go into a conference room and try to figure out the sweet spot of "person it seems plausible we chose, but is still slightly controversial so we can sell a lot of issues." (Presidential election years are almost boring, as whoever wins is virtually guaranteed to get it.) I'm guessing, based on that, it came down to Snowden vs Pope Francis and the board decided there are a lot of Catholics who were going to buy the magazine if he was on the cover... and older people who are more likely to buy magazines." http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1smplz/pope_francis_is_times_person_of_the_year_for_2013/cdz3vm2 http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1smplz/pope_franc...