It’s best not to generalize too much about a newspaper that covers a city whose unofficial battle cry is “Keep Austin Weird,” but there is a palpable connection to The Chronicle here. Many people will also point out that Austin is a notoriously liberal, literate place, but that hasn’t done a lot for The Austin American-Statesman, which, like so many other daily papers, is in decline and up for sale.

“They are a big part of the story here and always have been,” said Frank Hendrix, who owns Emo’s, a club here, and was overseeing three stages during the festival.

It’s an old-school love kind of love. The newspaper’s Web site, in spite of Austin’s reputation as a tech-savvy place, has never been a particularly remarkable one and is still basically a companion to the print version, which is crammed with all manner of editorials, deep political coverage and lots of articles rendered in almost unreadable small type.

“We don’t do gotcha journalism, our coverage is very policy-oriented, and always local, local, local,” he said. “Even during the Bush years, which were a very big deal here, we never put anybody that wasn’t local on the cover. We don’t do out-of-towners.”

Last Thursday night, sitting outside the Hilton Austin and later walking Red River Street, which was a riot of music performances and noise, Mr. Black said that the festival and the newspaper have been pretty much hand-in-glove all along the way. It’s hard to think of another American city where the newspaper has served as an engine for innovation. South by Southwest now has three vibrant legs  music, film and Web  that come together to create a stool that is the envy of every other American city.

“All of it has to do with Austin, and not us,” Mr. Black, who also produces films including “The Order of Myths.” “Apart from all of the music here, when Richard Linklater hit it big with ‘Slackers,’ he not only didn’t move away, but began helping other filmmakers. Mike Judge, who did ‘Beavis and Butt-head,’ same way. Robert Rodriguez as well.”

“We have a critical mass of culture, of government, of people who like to read, that makes this a good place to have a newspaper like ours.” A cop walks by and high-fives Mr. Black, which is not the general relationship between most newspapers and local law enforcement, but The Chronicle’s footprint is so deep here  millions and millions of dollars are flowing into the city this week  that people generally think that what’s good for The Chronicle is good for the community and vice versa.

It was getting on toward 11 p.m., which is high noon during the days of the festival, and Mr. Black dropped me at a club. I watched him walk down the street and he couldn’t get three steps without someone stopping him to say hello or tell him thanks. Imagine that: a newspaper man being one of the most popular guys in town.