Time Person of the Year 2013

For crying out loud! What difference has the Pope made to the world (and do remember, the world does include non-Christian countries...or roughly 5 billion out of 7 billion people...and I&#x27;m not even getting into Catholics vs. non-Catholics here).<p>Colour me cynical, but any publication that declares anyone other than Edward Snowden as the Person of the Year in 2013 has to have some pretty BIG reasons for doing so. And the Pope&#x27;s just don&#x27;t cut it.

With their bold investigative reporting and willingness to speak truth to power, I just can&#x27;t understand why weekly news magazines are having such a hard time in the U.S.

Well, this Pope has been remarkably liberal and transformational. He&#x27;s only remarkable in the context of the last few popes, who were insanely conservative. Francis is merely extremely conservative...

Well, that was certainly the safer choice. Francis is an interesting figure so far, but he hasn&#x27;t caused -- yet, anyway -- worldwide changes in the political dialogue like Snowden has. Time, though, went with a choice that doesn&#x27;t annoy the powerful Western democracies.

He shows promise but, like awarding Obama the Nobel peace prize, this is just too soon.

I&#x27;m not saying Snowden or the Pope should or shouldn&#x27;t be the POTY... but the narrow mindedness here is pretty silly (yet predictable). Maybe it&#x27;s hard for atheist technologists living in the tech bubble to fathom, but the Pope is unbelievably influential to not just the millions (or even billions) of Catholics around the world, but even those who are not Catholic&#x2F;Christian. I&#x27;m not sure whether Pope Francis will&#x2F;has inspired policy change, moved political waves, etc, but when one person can <i>potentially</i> inspire perspective change in billions of people in the way they treat others and view many of the hot button issues in the world today, that seems worthy enough for POTY candidacy.

Did they finally just throw out the poll data and go with whoever they wanted? I remember originally Snowden was winning by a landslide.

Somehow I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if Snowden has just as much impact on 2014 as he did on 2013.

Why are these &quot;Person of the Year&quot; stories still relevant?

Time awarding Snowden POY would them look out of the loop. That seems to be the logiical PR explanation. Vatican is really a diminished institution, while the NSA is ascendent. This just impugns the relevance of Time mag&#x27;s editorial, in a way...which is not flattering.

I&#x27;m continually amazed at the frequent and detailed coverage, by <i>every</i> major news organization, expended on every snore and snuffle emitted by this one weird cult.<p>I&#x27;m almost as amazed by my own persistent naivete: I went to <i>Time</i> fully expecting to see Snowden.

I think that some of you guys are missing the point by being a bit too America-centric. The new Pope is a gamechanger for a ton of people and has effected more lives directly than Snowden has (at least in those peoples&#x27; perspective).

Yes please, make this choice least interesting&#x2F;controversial as possible to make it even more irrelevant. The interesting question is: would it be someone else if Time wasn&#x27;t US media?

Maybe that&#x27;s my trope as much as Snowden looks like a trope to some other commenters here but 2013 was the perfect timing[0] for a POY &quot;LGBT Recognition&quot; or so.<p>Anyway, I&#x27;m betting on a science-related POY in 2014, remember to check if I was right ;)<p>[0] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage#Timeline" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Same-sex_marriage#Timeline</a>

They have well and truly learnt that they get more clicks by naming someone completely undeserving than the answer everyone expects.

Here&#x27;s some info about the poll. It reports a few (too few) numbers. I suppose the editors didn&#x27;t want to overwhelm us.<p><a href="http://poy.time.com/2013/12/05/egypts-sisi-wins-readers-poll-for-time-person-of-the-year/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;poy.time.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;12&#x2F;05&#x2F;egypts-sisi-wins-readers-poll...</a>

meh, I am not impressed by the pope. If he wanted, he could to something, e.g. propagating the use of condoms in developing countries. But so far all he did were some propaganda stunts. Especially the &quot;capitalism = bad&quot; letter he published (written in the Vatican, surrounded by gold and amassed wealth) is not worth the paper he printed it on.<p>I have recently visited South Africa and I have seen the problems caused by non existent (or rather: not allowed by the church) family planning.<p>However, lots of people (mostly Catholics) just want see some change, and Franzicus is feeding their hopes. Not a hard job after Ratzinger (remember, he was head of the current-time inquisition), but as long as he doesn&#x27;t tackle any of the real world problems that are within his reach, he is nothing more than a prop.

This is as big a cop-out as choosing Giuliani over Osama bin Laden as Time Person of the Year 2001.

I figured they wouldn&#x27;t give it to Snowden. They&#x27;re too scared&#x2F;docile to do such a thing. They gave it to Zuckerberg - in 2011 (why that year?!) - instead of Assange, too, so whatever. To me Time POY is useless.

Why do people angry? It&#x27;s <i>Time</i> person of the year, they have their own criteria, they can choose anyone they want, they don&#x27;t need to justify it. If you want, you can also publish your own person of the year.

Is this a joke or a payoff?!

Well, we all know Time, Time&#x2F;Warner and the media in general in the US is owned in the worst definitive way. So, of course Snowden can&#x27;t be Person of the Year.

I&#x27;m sorry, why the fuck is dead tree publication praising a religious bigot a top story on HN?

shameful. although he has certainly had an impact, what a revolting choice.<p>to pick such a wicked and corrupt individual, especially one who is deluded into thinking of themselves as righteous...<p>gah!!!<p>still... at least it wasn&#x27;t Snowden.