TIME Person of the Year 2018 will be named tomorrow, December 11.
The magazine has given out a title of this caliber since 1928 when it dubbed American aviator Charles Augustus Lindbergh as 1927 “Man of the Year.”
Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, became the first “Woman of the Year” in 1937, and the honor officially became gender neutral in 1999.
According to a write-up about the annual title, former Managing Editor Walter Isaacson described it as “the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year, for better or for worse.”
Therefore, Person of the Year is a nod to an individual or group that has most readily influenced the news cycle. As TIME points out, this person (or persons) is not necessarily a hero. Adolf Hitler, for instance, was named Person of the Year in 1938.
Editors at TIME make the final decision, but the magazine also has the public weigh in with a reader’s choice poll.
In 2017, TIME named “silence breakers” of the #MeToo movement its 2017 Person of the Year.
“This is the fastest moving social change we’ve seen in decades and it began with individual acts of courage by hundreds of women – and some men, too – who came forward to tell their own stories,” Editor-in-Chief Edward Felsenthal told NBC News at the time.
Other past winners include Donald Trump (2016), Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel (2015) and Ebola Fighters (2014).
TIME announced this year’s shortlist of finalists this morning on the Today Show. TIME Person of the Year 2018 will be revealed on that same show this Tuesday after 7:00 a.m. ET.
The top 10 finalists of 2018 include March For Our Lives activists who rallied together to bring awareness to gun violence post-Parkland shooting, thousands of families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border and psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford.
In front of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the rest of the world, Ford testified about sexual assault allegations against SCOTUS judge Brett Kavanaugh prior to his nomination vote. Her accounts and his emotional denial sparked protests nationwide this fall.
Here’s the shortlist for @TIME’s Person of the Year #TIMEPOY pic.twitter.com/kHAmF8A3ut
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) December 10, 2018
Click through the gallery above for the full list of TIME Person of the Year 2018 finalists.
The 10 finalists are listed in no particular order.
