When I got my first piece in The New York Times - even though I'd done a bunch of things for UK newspapers by that point - it felt like an impossibly august place. Apart from anything else, it was the first time I'd ever been edited (as opposed to having bits amputated from the piece without being consulted). And then there was the sight of it in the Arts & Leisure section, with that newsprint.... I was 27.
Kieran Press-Reynolds, our son, just got his debut piece in The New York Times, aged 21. It went online today - the day before his graduation - and is in the paper edition Tuesday. And we're in New York, our old home, for the ceremony, so able to pick up a physical copy. Where it bears the deliciously none-more-Times-y headline "Young Sonic Scofflaws Create Chaotic New Genre". Scofflaws!
I am proud, and impressed, and a little consternated, frankly. 21!
The piece is about a new music subculture that has sprung up around Roblox, a sandbox game. If you don't know what either of those things refers to, Kieran explains it very clearly.