September 9, 2026 — 9:01am
A while back I had an idea I was genuinely excited about – good, well-formed, exactly the kind of thing I know about after many years in my work game. I put it forward. They loved it. “Yup, we must do it,” they enthused.
After a while, nothing came back. Not a no, just silence, which if you’ve worked long enough in any creative industry you learn to read as its own kind of answer. Anyway, months later, a version of it appeared anyway. Different names attached. Same essential idea, dressed up in slightly different clothes.
This isn’t a piece about being wronged – nobody owes me anything because I’ve been doing my stuff a long time – but that moment (and its cousins) told me something about having the ideas but then getting them implemented by a, did I say younger, model.
That got me thinking yet again about age bias which is real and not so subtle once you know what you’re looking at. I also remember when I was with a group of younger colleagues talking about our upcoming coverage of a huge event, one of which I had intimate knowledge. Instead of staring at me like I was an idiot – which I would have preferred – they just talked over everything I tried to suggest and to say.
