WASHINGTON – You can always predict some of the names that will show up on TIME magazine’s annual list of the 100 Most Influential People, but never all of them. And the magazine’s Nation Editor Ben Goldberger, who helps put together the list, tells WTOP that’s the way he likes it.
How do you get on the list? The answer is simple, yet complicated.
“Be influential,” Goldberger says.
He admits that term is “incredibly broad,” but that the magazine’s staff loves that.
“It means anybody who helps shape the world we live in – from very overt power” – President Obama and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi were obvious choices, Goldberger says – “people who enact economic policy, like Janet Yellen, or those who wrote songs that we just can’t get out of our heads, like Kanye or Taylor Swift.”
Asked his favorites from the list, Goldberger says it’s hard to narrow it down, because one of the appeals of the list is the high-powered people who write the appreciations of the honorees. Some of the choices can seem instinctive; some, incongruous: President Obama writes about Modi; Kim Kardashian is profiled by Martha Stewart; Apple CEO Tim Cook, who came out last year, is appreciated by congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis – “a perspective on the CEO we normally don’t get.”
Some of the names on the list — comedian Amy Schumer, for example – aren’t household names yet, but Goldberger says that’s part of the deal – “part of what we do … is not just point to those who everyone may know, but identify people who are more subtly influential, and whose influence is likely to grow.”
Goldberger adds that it’s a learning experience.
“There’s always people you don’t know about. … What I often learn the most about are the philanthropists, scientists, medical researchers who are doing work that is critically important, trying to make our world a better place, but generally out of the limelight.”
