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- <text id=92TT0021>
- <title>
- Jan. 06, 1992: From The Managing Editor
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- Jan. 06, 1992 Man of the Year:Ted Turner
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- FROM THE MANAGING EDITOR, Page 8
- </hdr><body>
- <p> It was not all that easy to decide on the Man of the Year for
- 1991. Two major international stories--the gulf war and the
- Second Russian Revolution--dominated the news, and both of
- them produced a fairly obvious list of candidates: George Bush,
- Norman Schwarzkopf, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and Boris
- Yeltsin, among others. On the domestic scene, too, individuals
- like Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas came to mind. But the more
- we thought about it, the more compelling it seemed to focus on
- a theme that emerged time and again as major events unfolded
- this year: the amazing power of CNN to bind the world into a
- truly global village.
- </p>
- <p> TIME's Man of the Year tradition began rather casually
- during a slow week at the end of 1927 when the magazine's
- editors didn't know whom to put on the cover. Recalling that
- they had shortchanged Lindbergh after he made the first solo
- crossing of the Atlantic earlier that year, they named him Man
- of the Year. The idea caught on, and among Lindy's successors
- have been such men as Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill
- and such women as Wallis Simpson and Madame Chiang Kai-shek.
- </p>
- <p> The Man of the Year is not an accolade, however, or our
- version of the Nobel Peace Prize. It is a judgment about news,
- and specifically about who, for better or worse, had the most
- impact on the course of history in a given year. The list
- includes people with indisputable credentials for goodness, like
- Mahatma Gandhi and the American G.I., but also some of the
- century's worst despots, like Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.
- </p>
- <p> This year's package was produced by several dozen
- staffers, under the guidance of assistant managing editor Jim
- Kelly. Associate editor Priscilla Painton, who approaches every
- subject with tireless zeal, spent a month interviewing Ted
- Turner's family, friends and associates. "I discovered that
- there was something new to say about him," says Painton. "He is
- a changed man not just because he fell madly in love or because
- he got older, but because he made an emotionally strenuous
- effort to grow up. There are no trophies in his office
- commemorating this adventure, but it may be the most courageous
- of all."
- </p>
- <p>-- Henry Muller
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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