Since when is this a word

This paragraph is from The New York Times Magazine's long (and quite good, mostly) story on the band The Arcade Fire, published (I think) this Sunday (note the word I've bolded):

Win Butler, Régine Chassagne, Will Butler, Richard Reed Parry, Tim Kingsbury, Jeremy Gara, Sarah Neufeld — all of them crowding together, massaging one another’s shoulders like actors in the school play and grabbing for empty plates so that Liza can dole out steaming ladles of pasta from her ginormous pot — this is the Arcade Fire, born in Montreal, soon to play London, New York and 5,000-seat venues in Dublin, Paris, Amsterdam, Oslo, Stockholm and Berlin, perhaps the biggest sensation right now on the world indie-music scene.

Since when is "ginormous" an official, acceptable word? I can see using it if you're a 15-year-old girl and you're writing about, I dunno, the birthday cake you saw MTV's My Super Sweet Sixteen ... but The NY Times? And I know that the writer is writing about a band and not, say, the U.S. trade deficit with Japan ... but I just can't see using it in respectable writing, no matter the topic.

And so: ginormous = officially banned. I shan't have it used again. NY Times: you've been warned.