Brian Williams hasn't been having a great year. So why did Time pick him as one of the 100 most influential people in the world? That's what some TV news insiders are wondering.
"How, exactly, does one become more influential when fewer people are watching you?" wonders one official from another news organization—not, incidentally, ABC, whose World News Tonight has beaten Williams's Nightly News in nine of the past 13 weeks. The official points out that Williams has long been a pet of Time editors, participating as a panelist in the magazine's Person of the Year luncheon for three years in a row. (Last time he even got to pick the winner!)