President Obama is Time's 'Person of the Year'

TIME selects the person who had the single greatest impact during the past year, for better or for worse

President Barack Obama has been named Time's "Person of the Year" for 2012.

The selection was announced Wednesday on NBC's "Today" show.

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The magazine's headline for Obama is "Person of the Year: Barack Obama, Architect of the New America."

Obama beat out Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo!; Mohammed Morsi, president of Egypt; Undocumented Americans; Bill and Hillary Clinton; President Barack Obama; Malala Yousafzai, the student activist from Pakistan who survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban; Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple; and the Higgs Boson and Italian physicist Fabiola Giannati.

Obama also received the honor in 2008, when he was President-elect.

Last year, "The Protester" got the honor.

Time's "Person of the Year" is the person or thing that has most influenced the culture and the news during the past year for good or for ill. In 2010, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg received the honor.

Other previous winners have included Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Bono and President George W. Bush.

Some 5.6 million people have already voted in TIME's reader poll. On Dec. 13, TIME revealed that the winner was Kim Jong Un, supreme leader of North Korea.