- This past September, our editors and reporters gathered to debate who should be TIME’s Person of the Year. The annual staff conversation is both entertaining and contentious, as we argue about which one person or group of people, of the nearly 8 billion alive today, had the most influence, for good or ill, on the year. From that first conversation, teams of reporters set out to cover the most promising candidates. The result is the issue you hold in your hands, and the words, photographs, and videos that appear on your screens.
- Sam Lansky, the writer of this year’s Person of the Year profile of Taylor Swift, has known the singer for over a decade through his work as an editor. Earlier this fall he visited with Swift at home for her first in-depth conversation with a journalist in nearly four years. With her three Person of the Year covers, photographed by Inez and Vinoodh, Swift makes her fourth, fifth, and sixth appearances on our cover. It’s been 14 years since Swift’s first interview with TIME, when the 19-year-old took questions from her tour bus on Hollywood Boulevard, brushing off concerns about trading a college experience for touring as a musician. “No matter what path you choose,” she said, “you’re going to miss something, and I don’t want to miss this.”