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10 of TIME's 100 'most influential'

What does it mean to be influential today? TIME Magazine may not have a scientific answer, but they identified scores of people in their 2012 “100 Most Influential People in the World” list, released this week. Some names are well-known, having been blasted throughout the twittersphere, like Jeremy Lin; while others may be less familiar, like “mobilizer” Barbara Van Dahlen. But “...we try to choose those people whose influence is both lasting and, with a few notable exceptions, laudable,” wrote Mr. Stengel. 

Here is a sampling of 10 people from around the world who made the cut.

Ali Ferzat, cartoonist

  • By Whitney Eulich Staff Writer

Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat has had his work depicting issues of politics, the economy, and Syrian society published in domestic and foreign publications, and is considered one of the Arab world’s most influential cultural figures. Known for pushing the boundaries of freedom of expression in Syria, Mr. Ferzat was found beaten and bloody by the side of a road in Damascus last year. In the midst of Bashar al-Assad’s efforts to quash dissident voices, Ferzat, whose work was critical of the authoritarian Syrian leader, was beaten by masked gunmen, and left with two broken hands.

“In the end, the joke is on the regime,” said Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Matt Wuerker, who wrote Ferzat’s entry for TIME. The regime thought it could end Ferzat’s career or intimidate him into stopping his work when they attacked him, said Mr. Wuerker. “Instead it created a powerful symbol who draws cartoons the whole world is now reading. Talk about a great punch line.”

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

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