Was there really any competition? A year ago, very few people even thought Barack Obama could beat Hillary Clinton. (I was one of the people who thought that's what would happen -- and said it publicly, even though I was mocked by my friends for it.) Obama was the amazing story of 2008.
But, does it matter anymore who Time Magazine thinks is the "person of the year"? Earlier this week, it was announced that Time Magazine's Jay Carney was going to work for Joe Biden, which prompted a discussion about the ongoing viability of weekly magazines. Adam Nagourney from the New York Times attributed the demise of those publications to the influence of blogosphere:
That said, he leaves Time Magazine when the future of weekly news magazines is clearly in doubt, and as these organizations have been forced to make sizable cutbacks and cope with a media landscape increasingly influenced by the blogosphere and not the newsweeklies.That's quite a plug from Mr. Nagourney -- and an acknowledgment of the changing media landscape.
So, I haven't asked John, but I think if we named a person of the year here at AMERICAblog, it would probably be Obama, too.
