The covers of Time magazine, which named Taylor Swift as its 2023 Person of the Year. (Courtesy: Time)
By:
December 7, 2023

Does Time magazine still matter?

In recent years, there have been stories about the so-called demise of Time magazine. In fact, The Atlantic wrote a story with the headline: “Running Out of TIME: The Slow, Sad Demise of a Great American Magazine.” That was 10 years ago.

Once upon a time, the weekly printed magazine was a must-read, and the cover not only reflected what was important that week, but often set the news agenda for the weeks to come.

The internet, of course, changed everything, and Time’s impact, especially in print, isn’t what it once was. Of course, you can say that about a lot of legacy media, including Time’s longtime chief rival, Newsweek. But there was a time when Time’s cover stories, on a weekly basis, were talked about everywhere from boardrooms to living rooms.

Today, the magazine is printed just twice a month and Time, like pretty much every other magazine, has become a digital-first news outlet.

There is still good journalism at Time, but does it have the overwhelming impact that it used to? That’s debatable.

But, there’s no question that once a year, Time is still a really big deal. That’s when it names its person of the year, which is generally one of the most talked about media stories of the year.

On Wednesday, the magazine announced its 2023 person of the year. It was an obvious choice: singer-songwriter Taylor Swift.

And you know how we know that it still matters? That the Time person of the year is still a really big deal? Because Swift gave an interview to Time’s Sam Lansky. Swift almost never gives exclusive interviews. This is believed to be her first in-depth interview in four years.

She talked about pretty much everything you wanted to know about: her career, her recent Eras tour, her catalog being sold to the company owned by music executive Scooter Braun.

One of the more interesting quotes was Swift talking about how she got ready, physically, for her concerts. As Time described, Swift’s shows on the Eras tour were “180 minutes, including 40-plus songs from at least nine albums; there are 16 costume changes, pyrotechnics, an optical illusion in which she appears to dive into the stage and swim, and not one but two cottagecore worlds, which feature an abundance of moss.”

So how did she do it? She said she began training six months before the tour.

“Every day I would run on the treadmill, singing the entire set list out loud,” Swift said. “Fast for fast songs, and a jog or a fast walk for slow songs.”

She added, “Then I had three months of dance training, because I wanted to get it in my bones. I wanted to be so over-rehearsed that I could be silly with the fans, and not lose my train of thought.”

And, of course, she talked about her NFL boyfriend, Travis Kelce.

Swift told Lansky, “This all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell. … We started hanging out right after that. So we actually had a significant amount of time that no one knew, which I’m grateful for, because we got to get to know each other. By the time I went to that first game, we were a couple. I think some people think that they saw our first date at that game? We would never be psychotic enough to hard launch a first date.”

Clearly, based on Swift’s quotes, this relationship is not a publicity stunt just because she goes to Kansas City Chiefs games and he goes to her concerts. She told Lansky, “When you say a relationship is public, that means I’m going to see him do what he loves, we’re showing up for each other, other people are there and we don’t care. … The opposite of that is you have to go to an extreme amount of effort to make sure no one knows that you’re seeing someone. And we’re just proud of each other.”

The point is, Swift opened up in a way she doesn’t often do, proving that Time magazine’s person of the year still means something.

Why Swift?

Time could’ve gone another direction with its person of the year selection. It could have been a world politician such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, X owner Elon Musk (although he was named in 2021) and U.S. President Joe Biden, who shared the honor in 2020 with Kamala Harris.

But, really, Swift seemed like the obvious choice.

Time editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs wrote, “The person chosen has typically been a ruler over traditional domains of power. He — and yes, usually it has been a ‘he’ — is very often a politician or a titan of industry.”

Jacobs continued, “And yet the person whose singular influence was revealed throughout 2023 has held none of these roles — or anything remotely similar. Every year contains light and dark; 2023 was a year with significant shares of darkness. In a divided world, where too many institutions are failing, Taylor Swift found a way to transcend borders and be a source of light. No one else on the planet today can move so many people so well. Achieving this feat is something we often chalk up to the alignments of planets and fates, but giving too much credit to the stars ignores her skill and her power.”

He wrote, “Swift is the rare person who is both the writer and hero of her own story.” And later added, “For building a world of her own that made a place for so many, for spinning her story into a global legend, for bringing joy to a society desperately in need of it, Taylor Swift is TIME’s 2023 Person of the Year.”

The other Time category of the year choices:

Breaking news in the Wall Street Journal

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the Republican congressman from California, announced he is leaving Congress at the end of the year. He broke the story himself, making the announcement by writing a commentary for The Wall Street Journal.

McCarthy bragged about what he considered positive accomplishments for the country and his party while he served as speaker. But once he was ousted from leadership, there were rumors that he might step away from Congress.

McCarthy wrote, “I will continue to recruit our country’s best and brightest to run for elected office. The Republican Party is expanding every day, and I am committed to lending my experience to support the next generation of leaders.”

Posting stories?

The Washington Post Guild is planning a 24-hour strike today. My colleague, Angela Fu, wrote in Wednesday’s Poynter Report that “at least 750 Washington Post employees will walk off the job Thursday after the paper’s union accused the company of violating federal labor law.

(The Guild) said the company has broken labor law by refusing to bargain with the union in good faith; the two sides have been negotiating a new contract for 18 months.”

Fu will have more today on Poynter.org and in Friday’s newsletter about the strike.

But just ahead of it, Washingtonian’s Andrew Beaujon wrote the Post will try to continue publishing stories. However, it doesn’t sound as if it will be easy. Beaujon posted an email from one unnamed Post editor that said:

This is the first time I have typed these words in my life: The bar is low.

We have nothing in the cupboard. And it’s kinda like Thanksgiving week in that people are walking out on Thursday, making the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday reports, umm…difficult.

If there is a sentencing, a bill introduction, an appointment — anything that even whiffs of news – do it. I’m serious. We need to hoard.

Thanks for understanding.

Beaujon added that some sections in Friday’s print editions could be smaller than normal and some writers might ask that their bylines be removed from stories as a part of the strike.

Death of a legend

Norman Lear, shown here in 2015. (Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File)

The great Norman Lear has died. The legendary TV executive who created such groundbreaking shows as “All in the Family,” “The Jeffersons,” “Good Times” and “Maude” was 101.

Lear was perhaps best known for “All in the Family,” a 1970s show based on a British sitcom and featuring actor Carroll O’Connor as the bigoted and ultra-conservative Archie Bunker — one of TV’s all-time great characters.

The New York Times’ Richard Severo and Peter Keepnews wrote, “‘All in the Family’ sent a shock through the sleepy world of the sitcom with one tart, topical episode after another from the moment it premiered on CBS on Jan. 12, 1971.”

They added, “Strictly a law-and-order guy, Archie also voiced strong reservations about what he saw as campus subversives, welfare chiselers and bleeding hearts. Such pronouncements were scandalous in the prime-time television world of the day. But Mr. Lear had found a gold mine.

‘All in the Family’ ran until 1979 and dominated the ratings for most of that time. More important, it established a template for television comedy by mixing political and social messages, as well as moments of serious drama, with the laughter.”

In addition, Lear’s comedies “Good Times” and “The Jeffersons” featured another rarity for TV of the 1970s: Black families as the central characters. “Good Times” was about a family trying to make ends meet in the inner city of Chicago, while “The Jeffersons” featured Sherman Hemsley as George Jefferson, a successful business owner. The Times wrote George’s “disdain for white people rivaled Archie’s for Black people.”

And then there’s “Maude.” (Hopefully, older readers will see what I did there.)

The Times wrote, “‘Maude,’ which ran from 1972 to 1978 on CBS, centered on Edith Bunker’s cousin Maude Findlay (Bea Arthur), who was as much a doctrinaire liberal as Archie was a determined denizen of the far, far right. The show dealt with alcoholism, pot smoking, abortion (Maude herself had one, in a two-part episode that generated outrage as well as applause) and other subjects to which that quick-tongued title character could apply her shrill wisdom.”

Lear also created a bunch of other well-known shows, such as “One Day at a Time,” “Diff’rent Strokes,” and the cult favorites “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” and “Fernwood 2 Night.”

Some more thoughtful pieces about Lear:

One more thing …

Last year, when he turned 100, Lear wrote an essay for The New York Times: “On My 100th Birthday, Reflections on Archie Bunker and Donald Trump.”

Lear wrote how “deeply troubled” he was by the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. He added that he doesn’t “take the threat of authoritarianism lightly” and talked about how he dropped out of college following the attacks on Pearl Harbor and went on to fly more than 50 missions in a B-17 bomber to, in his words, “defeat fascism consuming Europe.”

He then talked about the most famous character he ever created: Archie Bunker.

Lear wrote, “For all his faults, Archie loved his country and he loved his family, even when they called him out on his ignorance and bigotries. If Archie had been around 50 years later, he probably would have watched Fox News. He probably would have been a Trump voter. But I think that the sight of the American flag being used to attack Capitol Police would have sickened him. I hope that the resolve shown by Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, and their commitment to exposing the truth, would have won his respect.”

Go back and read his essay, which has as much meaning today as it did a year and a half ago when he wrote it.

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One more thing

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Tom Jones
Tom Jones is Poynter’s senior media writer for Poynter.org. He was previously part of the Tampa Bay Times family during three stints over some 30…
Tom Jones

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