Time - USA (2020-12-21)

6 Time December 21/December 28, 2020

in The fall of any normal year, we pack

a conference room at TIME’s headquarters in

New York City with reporters, producers and edi-

tors to debate who should be selected as Person

of the Year, one of the most-watched franchises

in journalism, one that has endured world wars

and depressions, periods of conflict and years of

peace—and now a global pandemic.

This year, we held the meeting from our homes

in cities around the world. Like so many of you,

we’ve been working remotely and collaborating

virtually. We met one another’s families and pets

as they popped into the camera; shared joys, con-

cerns and anxieties; cared for and sometimes lost

loved ones to this terrible disease.

Some things did stay the same. As we’ve done

for the past 93 years, different teams of journal-

ists were launched on parallel projects for Person

of the Year, without knowing who or what the ulti-

mate choice would be. This year—as in 2016, when

Donald Trump became Person of the Year follow-

ing his victory—offered the additional dimension

of a U.S. presidential election concluding around

the time we normally start to lock in decisions.

Collaboration is a hallmark of our team, and it

is not overstatement to say that nearly everyone

at TIME touched this project. The many pieces

were overseen by executive editor Ben Goldberger,

joined by an editorial committee that included

Naina Bajekal, Lori Fradkin, Mahita Gajanan and

Victor Williams. They kept everything together

at a time when we were all kept apart. “There was

a special resonance to this year’s project,” says

Ben, “because we were living so many of these

stories as we were telling them.”

As the world trAnsformed in 2020, so did

we. One of the great privileges of working here

is the opportunity to be in conversation with

TIME’s history —and to build on it. As the na-

tion celebrated the 100th anniversary of the

19th Amendment, we introduced Women of the

Year, a multimedia effort recognizing a century’s

worth of women who belong among Person of the

Year’s historic company. We also introduced our

first Kid of the Year, working with our colleagues at

TIME for Kids and with Nickelodeon to spotlight

remarkable children across the U.S. One of those

kids, 14-year-old artist Tyler Gordon, painted the

portrait of LeBron James, TIME’s 2020 Athlete of

the Year, on one of the covers of this issue.

In our second year after becoming an

independent company, under the ownership of Marc

and Lynne Benioff, we found new ways to connect

with our audiences, such as our TIME100 Talks vir-

tual events, and new technologies like Zoom, created

by the 2020 Businessperson of the Year Eric Yuan,

that enabled our work. We launched a TIME for Kids

digital- subscription product; prime-time broadcast

specials on ABC, Nickelodeon/CBS and NBC; and a

variety of new newsletters, which together now reach

more than 1.4 million subscribers. We also built new

offerings in health and personal finance.

Early in the year, we brought Martin Luther King Jr.

into virtual reality. That project, a first-of-its-kind

re-creation of the March on Washington, served as a re-

minder of King’s unfinished work. The urgency of that

work became even clearer this summer, as calls to end

systemic racism reverberated around the world. This

issue tells that story, in part, through our 2020 Guard-

ians of the Year: racial-justice organizers like Assa Traoré

in Paris and Porche Bennett-Bey in Kenosha, Wis.

Like many companies, TIME has been grappling

with what equality means in our own workplace. We’ve

committed to our audiences and to our team to do

more to amplify underrepresented voices in our cover-

age and to support Black employees and staff members

from marginalized groups in our newsroom and our

company. We are working to make TIME an equitable,

diverse and inclusive organization. As I wrote earlier

this year, we know that will make TIME stronger.

on dec. 7, I traveled with Washington bureau chief

Massimo Calabresi, senior correspondent Charlotte

Alter, photo director Katherine Pomerantz, execu-

tive producer Jonathan Woods and others to meet with

President- elect Joe Biden and Vice President–elect

Kamala Harris at the Queen Theater in Wilmington, Del.

We talked with them about the challenges of conduct-

ing a transition in the pandemic and about those ahead.

From our distance of 16 ft., I asked Biden how much

remote work and other aspects of our pandemic lives

would continue once it was over. “I think we’re going to

get back to the ability to embrace one another,” he said.

“I think that’s important.” At one point, Biden stopped

the proceedings to do that virtually by FaceTiming with

the parents of our photographer Camila Falquez.

The selection of Person of the Year is rarely easy,

and this year was far more difficult than most. Predic-

tions can make fools of all of us, but it seems safe to

say that historians will look at 2020 as a crucial turn-

ing point on many fronts. In Joe Biden and Kamala

Harris, we have two individuals whose election mir-

rored and moved the major stories of this year and

whose fates will shape the nation’s role in the world

and the future of the American experiment.

Edward Felsenthal,

ediTor-in-chief & ceo

@efelsenThal

Behind

the Scenes

From the Editor

The Choice

Portrait by

Jason Seiler

for TIME