Since 1927 TIME has produced a “Person of the Year” issue to decree the most influential person or persons in the news. At 200 pages this edition in the Person of the Year series was their longest issue ever. The decision to choose “You,” as the biggest newsmaker of 2006 has already made waves through the blogosphere.
Some decreed it a stunt for readers, others too little too late.

So NewAssignment.Net went to the TIME/Life building in New York and sat down with Stephen Koepp, TIME magazine’s deputy managing editor, to find out about the back story to this choice and how they are reacting to all the hoopla.

NewAssignment.Net: How did Time settle on giving “You” the award? Was it highly debated by the editorial staff or did everyone agree right away?

Stephen Koepp: There is a process for gathering information. We get suggestions from all our bureaus and bring them back, and they are finalists. Then there is a phase of preliminary reporting and we see where the news goes. At the end of the process we got enough to do several person of the year projects. The final decision is made by the Managing editor Richard Stengel.

The question you are asking — was it a consensus. There is a debate. And the managing editor knows what people think, but he makes the call essentially.

NAN: Who were the runners up?

Koepp: It came down to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran and in this issue we have an exclusive interview with him. But we felt and ultimately decided the way the news is being reported these days, the culminations of citizen journalism and its relationship to digital democracy, was the important issue of the day.

NAN: I understand that even during the phase of choosing candidates an open model was used through YouTube.

Koepp: We used all kinds of ways to get ideas from outside and one was that we had a poll with possible candidates like the YouTube guys. There was also pulling in ideas online, like the American Voter.

Toward the end of the process, we’ve been doing more video and going in that direction by asking for nominations through YouTube.

But in all different ways we are gathering ideas from everywhere. We kept our ears open to everything.

NAN: One criticism that has come up is the fact that citizen journalism has been around for some time now. Is Time magazine late to proclaim this the year of “You” media?

Koepp: I think that this year it reached critical mass because of the rise of sites like YouTube that really took hold. Wikipedia had been around, but this is the year that people really started to understand this new wave of media, what does it mean and how it unfolds. And there were several incidents like the macaca incident, the Foley incident or like the Michael Richards situation where the camera phone video got put up. There were lots of examples where people could start to see how it was working.

NAN: What about packaging. What were some of the things that guided the entire package? How did you build a news magazine around “You”?

Koepp: One thing was to show, really emphatically, that user-generated content isn’t just for entertainment. This year there were things that got into the bloodstream of the news media that were influential. In the election for example, of S.R. Sidharth, who got called macaca by George Allen. There was the blogger who blew the whistle and first talked about Mark Foley’s other life. That had consequences too. And we talked to a military blogger as well. We wanted to show that this is about how we see the world and how we work and you’ll see that in those 15 or so profiles; there is a lot of diversity.

NAN: In this magazine TIME is having a conversation with the blogosphere, the very people you were covering. How has the reaction been?

Koepp: It’s been controversial. Anecdotally, without measuring scientifically, it seems like more reaction and more chatter than I’ve seen before. There are a bunch of different camps. There is the camp of conservatives that feel it’s a bad thing — it’s too egalitarian and is somehow indulging people’s narcissist tendencies.

There is a certain part of the blogosphere that feels this is not new, that we’ve been doing this for awhile so they feel it’s old.

There is a certain traditionalist crowd that feels the rule is for TIME to pick an individual and that TIME is breaking its own rule. So they are provoked.

There is a certain group, advocates of digital democracy, who seem heartened by this — finally there is recognition of the mainstream media, a full embrace of what’s going on here.

What we really don’t know yet is what readers think and we will have to wait to see what the letters to the editor say.

NAN: Dan Gilmore had an interesting response, which is something we tapped into at NAN. He focused on the use of the word “You,” as keeping a divide between old and new media players. How do you respond to this criticism?

Koepp: He makes an interesting subtle point. I think “You” just makes more sense, as a form of addressing the audience. “Us” seems to refer to the magazine, and even though we embrace it we are speaking to the reader.

How did you interpret it? (Keopp asked NAN)

NAN: To be fair that might be over-analyzing it to some extent, but there is a sense where this magazine is telling bloggers that “You” won the award and we are here to tell you, it keeps that bridge between old and new media.

Koepp: I don’t think we thought of it that way, but there is a certain part where we are taking responsibility for our decision.

NAN: In deciding the package and what defines this new media wave, it was very much about individuals. There wasn’t talk about organizations or projects that are moving the field forward.

Koepp: Part of that is because it’s still in development. I don’t think it’s really reached fruition at this point. I think you are seeing an unorganized approach at this point, volunteers. The forces will be marshaled more and organized, but that is another step. To some extent we talked about Wikipedia, Firefox, and OhMyNews, so we did give some examples of that – I’ve looked a lot personally at citizen journalism – and how TIME be involved in that. And it’s still evolving.

NAN: That was actually my next question. Where does Time see itself in relation to the future of citizen journalism?

Koepp: I think just like other media we are experimenting with it. For example, best photos of the year – we called for readers to send in pictures. And we picked out three winners to print, even more were put online, and they are very good photos. I think we want to have a lot more reader comments and conversations, but these are little steps along the path. What Gannett is doing is experimenting and many news organizations like Reuters are doing this. It’s going somewhere, we just don’t know where yet.

NAN: Did you expect as much criticism for the Person of the Year choice as you received?

Koepp: I expected that it would be provocative, that people would come at it form all different angles. It got people’s attention. What I hope is that people will, beyond looking at the cover and responding to it initially, will open it up because it’s a very rich issue, it’s the biggest [Person of the Year] ever published. It has a lot of things beyond just person of the year. I’m really proud of how diverse our collection of profiles is. The piece on the YouTube guys is the best one I’ve seen, it has a lot of good commentary and story to it. So beyond the initial hubbub and superficial reaction to it, I think people will be engaged by what they read.

David Cohn is NewAssignment.Net’s editor