According to one ranking, Michael Kors is the most influential New York right now. The Wall Street Journal launched its NYIndex today, which seeks to stand as an "empirical guide to power, fame and infamy." Though you can examine the rankings by different industries, Kors tops the top-ten list overall — and that's not even the "People's Pick," where Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein, and Journal owner Rupert Murdoch top Jay-Z. In the official power list, Kors is followed by Marc Jacobs and Chris Christie: 

The NYIndex's methodology explains that the rankings are derived from Factiva a "media-archive service." Factiva scans newspapers, magazines, blogs, and websites for names, looking at how many times they appear and where they appear. It also looks at Twitter feeds. A baseline score derived from that is then amended using factors like the person's industry's "contribution to the gross domestic product" and their Klout score. 

It seems a little jarring to name Michael Kors the most influential New Yorker — Michael Bloomberg and Mario Cuomo get thrown down past Christie on the separate entry for politics, law, and government. But as one part of the Journal's package points out, it is New York Fashion Week after all, so if there's any time for him to be tops, it's now. The Index will change weekly, so perhaps his reign is fleeting. 

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Esther Zuckerman