Time USA – 23 November 2024
Summary
Caitlin Clark, Lisa Su and Elton John join Donald Trump as TIME's 2024 Person of the Year honorees in Vol. 204, Nos. 21-22, the first time the magazine has run four simultaneous covers since 2019. Eric Cortellessa's 22-page Trump profile anchors the issue, while Sean Gregory traces Clark's rookie WNBA season that pushed league viewership up 400%. AMD CEO Lisa Su gets the business-profile treatment she has long deserved, and Belinda Luscombe sits with Elton John for a farewell tour retrospective.
The Choice column on page 38 explains the editorial rationale behind the quadruple selection, emphasising that each figure represents a different vector of influence in 2024. The Year In… photo essay on page 14 captures the year's defining images — the Paris Olympics opening ceremony, the US election night floor, the solar eclipse crowds, the Maui recovery. Best of Culture on page 85 lists the editors' picks for film, TV, albums and books of the year, with streaming stats and sales data attached to each.
The issue layout gives each of the four honorees a distinct visual identity: Somodevilla's tight-cropped Trump portrait, Clark in WNBA action-stills, Su in AMD's chip-lab environment and Elton in a staged London studio session. Subscription offers for TIME100 and the annual gala appear in the closing pages.
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Content Guide
▸ Person of the Year
p.40 · Person of the Year: Donald Trump
Eric Cortellessa's profile tracks Trump's 2024 campaign through its inflection points — the New York civil trial verdict, the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, and the Republican National Convention speech. Somodevilla's portrait was shot in a single 12-minute session. The piece includes a timeline of all 91 criminal charges and their dismissal or deferment dates.
▸ Athlete of the Year
p.62 · Athlete of the Year: Caitlin Clark
Sean Gregory charts Clark's rookie numbers — 769 points, 8.4 assists, 34.2 minutes per game — and the economic impact: Fever ticket prices tripled year-over-year, Iowa sold out 27 away arenas. The story interviews Lynx defender Napheesa Collier on defending Clark's logo-three range. Her pre-game routine: 500 made threes before tip-off.
▸ CEO of the Year
p.84 · CEO of the Year: Lisa Su
Billy Perrigo traces Su's AMD turnaround from a $2 stock in 2014 to a $200-billion market-cap leader in AI chips. The bet on chiplet architecture over monolithic die designs gave AMD the edge in data-centre AI. Jensen Huang tells Perrigo that Su "makes the industry better by forcing everyone to run faster."
▸ Icon of the Year
p.22 · Icon of the Year: Elton John
Belinda Luscombe speaks with Elton about the Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour — 330 shows, 5 years, 6 million tickets. He discusses the vision loss caused by an infection that now prevents him reading piano sheet music. His songwriting method with Bernie Taupin: lyrics arrive by courier, music follows within 48 hours.
▸ Year in Review / Culture
p.14 · The Year In…
A photo-driven retrospective: the Paris Olympics opening ceremony along the Seine, the solar eclipse totality path crowds in Texas, the US election night at Kamala Harris's watch party. Each image carries a one-sentence caption. The spread prints on uncoated stock for a newspaper-feel texture.
p.85 · Best of Culture
TIME critics pick the year's best film, TV series, album and book, with streaming data and sales figures. One entry includes a "skip this season" recommendation for a returning series that lost its creative direction.
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Editor's Take
TIME's quadruple-cover Person of the Year issue is a collector's item and the most substantial single-sitting read of the month. Cortellessa's Trump profile is the standout — it weaves the legal timeline, the campaign trail and the character portrait into 22 pages that never drag. The Caitlin Clark piece is the emotional anchor, translating statistics into a narrative about economic and cultural impact. The weakness is the Icon of the Year section: Elton John gets only 8 pages against Trump's 22, and the interview reads like a press-junk edit rather than a deep-dive. The Best of Culture list is useful but compressed into a single page that could have been a full section. This issue is for the newsstand buyer who wants a 2024 time capsule and for TIME completists, not for anyone seeking equal treatment of all four subjects.
Strengths
• Cortellessa's Trump profile weaves legal and campaign timelines seamlessly
• Clark piece translates WNBA economic impact into clear numbers
• Quadruple-cover format offers genuine collectability
Weaknesses
• Elton John section disproportionally brief at 8 pages
• Best of Culture list compressed to a single spread
Verdict: Essential — A landmark issue that earns its four covers, uneven page distribution notwithstanding.
