After being heavily derided for naming mid-aughts sensation Mark Zuckerberg as its 2010 Person of the Year, Time Magazine has bounced back and gotten it right this year. The magazine has named “The Protester” its 2011 Person of the Year, which, the magazine notes, marks a rather miraculous comeback for that form of political action. In 2011, political protests literally changed the world, and even made something of a dent in the American cultural landscape.

The current reigning champ of the GOP presidential field is Governor Rick Perry, the most recent candidate to be profiled in TIME Magazine. Chris Matthews and his panel wondered if a candidate with Perry’s style and particular brand of conservatism would be able to win him the presidential nomination. Matthews even compared Perry to conservative icon Ronald Reagan, suggesting a starker difference between the two than most would think.

The rumored tension between Texas Governor and Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry and the the last man to hold both titles simultaneously, President George W. Bush, has made for plenty of headlines– a tension around with many in the Bush camp have been implicated. Hosting The O’Reilly Factor tonight, Laura Ingraham got to speak to one of those in the Bush camp, Karl Rove, and drilled him on the relationship between two of his former candidates. Rove was not too happy to be addressing the rumors.

On Time‘s Swampland blog today, Massimo Calabresi reveals something interesting about Viet Dinh, the man handpicked by Rupert Murdoch to oversee News Corp.’s internal probe into allegations of phone hacking. During his first week at Harvard, Dinh began a long, ongoing friendship with Preet Bharara — who just so happens to be the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the person leading the U.S.’s investigation into News Corp.

As investigators attempt to make sense of the tragic events in Norway yesterday that officials now claim left at least 92 dead both in the capital of Oslo and Utoya Island, new details have begun to surface as to the identity of the man behind the shooting, and whether he acted alone. Despite an Islamic fundamentalist group trying to take credit for the attacks, Norweigian officials have apprehended a suspect with an entirely different background: “a right-wing Christian fundamentalist who may have had an issue with Norway’s multi-cultural society.”

TIME‘s Michael Crowley says “it’s not easy to get to Michele Bachmann.” Not in the sense of getting under her skin, but literally getting close enough to throw a question at her. As Crowley writes, “Her appearance at a rally on Tuesday in Aiken, S.C., attended by perhaps 150 people, featured three uniformed police officers and two plainclothes bodyguards. One of those guards spent much of the day preventing reporters from getting too close to the candidate.” Of course, ABC News chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross can’t be discouraged by mere bodyguards.

A lot of Washington reporters love covering politics from, you know, Washington. But TIME‘s Joe Klein has pretty much had it up to here with DC, and–since the 2012 election seems to be nearing full-swing status–he’s got a better idea, that combines finding stories and escaping the Capital. “Washington is just too ugly for words. The rest of the world isn’t much of a bargain, either. I’m feeling the need to get outta here, hit the road, talk to actual people. And so–you knew it was coming–another road trip!”

Just a matter of days ago, most Americans had probably never heard of the U.K. tabloid News of the World. Tomorrow, a mockup of the now deceased newspaper makes the front page of TIME, hitting newsstands across the country. “SCANDAL!” reads the headline, followed by the sub-hed “how a tabloid meltdown threatens Rupert Murdoch and his media empire.”

The cover story, by Catherine Mayer, outlines the scandal that boiled over in Britain and led to the demise of the 168-year old News of the World, and contemplated the larger impact the scandal may yet have on Murdoch and the media empire he’s steadily built over decades:

When the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal broke in May, many reporters tried to bring the story home for Americans by comparing it to Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s revelation that he’d fathered a love child. With DSK back in the news this week after new reports that he may be innocent after all, pundits are again drawing parallels to another case being discussed, that of Casey Anthony. “Combined with the seeming collapse of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case, the shock showed a press quick to jump to conclusions, if not about actual guilt, then at least about guilty verdicts,” TIME‘s James Poniewozik said, upon the conclusion of the Anthony trial this week. What do these two stories really have in common with each other?

With the rise of Rep. Michele Bachmann and the media’s coverage of Sarah Palin, the targeted sexism, as some perceive it, against conservative women has become as semi-permanent staple in American politics. On this morning’s Fox & Friends, Andrew Breitbart weighed in on what he considered a double standard that makes female and minority conservatives’ lives “a permanent game of Jeopardy!”

You may have thought about TV’s Dr. Oz as the kind of cool, smart doctor you wish you got to talk to when you had a problem or a question, instead of the doc who keeps you waiting forever and then seems vaguely uninterested while examining you. Dr. Mehmet Oz may be a great caregiver, but turns out–by his own admission–he’s a lousy patient. “In hindsight, I recognize that the universe had to drill through three distinct layers of arrogance (or denial) as it changed my perspective on cancer and cancer screening,” Oz writes in a TIME cover story on his recent cancer scare, which hits newsstands tomorrow. “I was healthy, and I knew the statistics, and I figured the risks didn’t apply to me.”

In a column called “The Great New Hampshire Heist,” TIME‘s Mike Murphy suggests a possible dark horse candidate swooping to victory in the nation’s first primary: former New York Governor George Pataki. Comparing Pataki’s low profile “caper” to the media spectacle of Sarah Palin‘s bus tour, Murphy argues “Pataki is going to try to steal the New Hampshire primary.”

As the internets have likely been informing you, last night on MSNBC’s The Last Word, TIME columnist Joe Klein said the Democratic win in New York’s 26th District special election was “a victory for socialism.”

On Fox, the comments were covered without any suggestion Klein might’ve been kidding. And at Hot Air, Klein’s applauded for getting it right: “He’s crowing about Hochul’s big win and that’s irritating, so I feel obliged to rip on him — and yet, I don’t really disagree. Medicare is socialistic and the public might, might, be attached to it to the point where they prefer not to touch it even though that necessarily means a fiscal crisis sooner rather than later.”

With the momentous news that Osama bin Laden has been killed, Saturday’s White House Correspondents Dinner feels almost like an event from a bygone era. Still, for those of you who still remember the dinner, but have already seen President Obama‘s blistering Donald Trump routine, or Seth Meyers‘ dry-roasting of the media like so many [...]

Remember how Us Weekly‘s website published a story about Sarah Palin trashing Christina Aguilera over her Super Bowl performance? And how it turned out to be a story fabricated for a satirical site? And Us Weekly almost immediately scrubbed the story? ‘Course you do. Well, evidently, Time doesn’t, because they repeated the exact same story.

What do you do when you’ve spent your entire career writing propaganda for fear of being jailed by the government and then, suddenly, one day, that government’s not there? That’s the question being faced by the staff of La Presse de Tunisie, a formerly state-run newspaper in Tunisia. Their struggles to answer this question are captured in a fascinating report put together by Time.

Joe Klein‘s shots against fellow liberals on CNN recently did not go unnoticed, especially by MSNBC host Ed Schultz, who Klein described as “stupid” and “unworthy.” In his “Psycho Talk” segment today, Schultz went after Klein for attacking a position some polls show a majority of Americans agree with, and hinted that Klein has something to gain from the war continuing.

Well, it’s pretty clear WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can get himself booked on The View.

The hosts chuckled at TIME‘s selection of Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg as Billionaire Person of the Year, conceding that, sure, Facebook is clearly a global big deal and Zuckerberg’s obviously smart.

But the Viewsters say the guy who’s really POTY-worthy is Assange.

A day before the International Man of Mystery known as Julian Assange landed on Interpol’s most-wanted list, the highly sought WikiLeaks founder treated Time‘s Rick Stengel to an interview conducted over Skype. The two discussed a number of the controversies surrounding his group’s releases, from Hillary Clinton‘s job security, the responsibility of governments to be more transparent, and whether his organization puts actual troops at risk—an allegation he says is “nonsense.”

It seems Wikileaks’ latest project– a compilation of several millions of diplomatic cables replete with confidential information embarrassing to a wide array of nations– was the last straw for editor-in-chief Julian Assange. After a verbal lashing from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Assange is tossing the ball back into her court, telling Time he would like to see her step down. Meanwhile, his Swedish misadventures have landed him an arrest warrant from Interpol.

Representative John Boehner is having a good few weeks: now that Republicans have won control of the House of Representatives, he’s poised to become the next Speaker of the House. And the media are covering Boehner relentlessly–in the first two weeks of November, he has been featured on the cover of three major weekly magazines.

This morning, we learned that the vast majority of claims made in political ads this midterm season have been blatantly false. But that doesn’t mean all of those ads have been ineffective.

Arthur Hochstein was the art director of Time magazine for 15 years, through the end of 2009. During his time there he designed over 1000 covers, including some of the most memorable magazine images of recent years. His iconic cover designs include everything from OJ Simpson, 9/11, the War in Iraq, George Bush, and Barack Obama. And although the covers of Time included some of the best illustrators and photographers in the world, many of the covers were photo-illustrated by Hochstein himself, who created numerous humorous and pointed images.

Dylan Stableford of The Wrap’s Media Alley blog looked around on Twitter to find out which national magazines had the most Twitter followers. After analyzing his findings, Stableford was surprised to find that “the biggest magazines in terms of print circulation have a shockingly puny presence on Twitter.” For example, Good Housekeeping (4.4 million circulation, 4,683 followers) didn’t break the Top 25. Neither did AARP The Magazine (24 million circ., 358 followers), which, really, should shock nobody. Meanwhile, Time (3.4 million circ., 2.2 million followers) and the embattled Newsweek (1.9 million circ., 1.2 million followers) both placed in the top ten.

Have you ever wanted to know how to beat someone up? Or, have you ever been flipping Time and wanted to see the reporter your reading beat up one of the other reporters with a roll of tape? If you answered yes to either of those questions, then I have just the video for you. In it, comedian and actor Judah Friedlander shows Time’s Josh Sanburn, Nate Jones, and Claire Suddath how they can take each other out in an office setting.