What It Means When TIME’s ‘Person of the Year’ Is a Group

Dec 07, 2017, 01:43 AM

It began when TIME’s editors needed to pick the Man of the Year — as the franchise was then called — for 1950. Which individual had the most influence, for better or worse, on the year’s events? For the first time since 1927, when the inaugural Man of the Year was chosen, there was no answer.

Instead, “the Man of the Year was best expressed in a symbol: the American Fighting-man,” the magazine’s publisher noted in the issue.