Louis Black is a co-founder of The Austin Chronicle, an alternative weekly

Alternative weekly

An alternative newspaper is a type of newspaper, that eschews comprehensive coverage of general news in favor of stylized reporting, opinionated reviews and columns, investigations into edgy topics and magazine-style feature stories highlighting local people and culture. Their news coverage is more...

 newspaper

Newspaper

A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...

 published in Austin, Texas

Austin, Texas

Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...

, and has been the newspaper's editor since its inception. He has written over 600 articles in his column in that newspaper. Black is also one of the co-founders of the South by Southwest Festival

South by Southwest

South by Southwest is an Austin, Texas based company dedicated to planning conferences, trade shows, festivals and other events. Their current roster of annual events include: SXSW Music, SXSW Film, SXSW Interactive, SXSWedu, and SXSWeco and take place every spring in Austin, Texas, United States...

, also located in Austin, although the festival operates separately from the Chronicle. He also is a founding partner in Toronto

Toronto

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

's North by Northeast

North by Northeast

North by Northeast is an annual five-day live music and film festival and music conference in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, held each June....

 music and film festival.

Black was born in Teaneck, New Jersey

Teaneck, New Jersey

Teaneck is a township in Bergen County, New Jersey, and a suburb in the New York metropolitan area. As of the 2010 United States Census, the township population was 39,776, making it the second-most populous among the 70 municipalities in Bergen County....

 where he was childhood friends with film critic Leonard Maltin

Leonard Maltin

Leonard Maltin is an American film and animated film critic and historian, author of several mainstream books on cinema, focusing on nostalgic, celebratory narratives.-Personal life:...

 and singer Phoebe Snow

Phoebe Laub

Phoebe Snow was an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist, best known for her chart-topping 1975 hit "Poetry Man"....

. Maltin and Black regularly prowled the rep cinemas of Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

 as teens. He moved to Austin to study film at The University of Texas

University of Texas at Austin

The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...

 where he received a BFA in 1980, and became knowledgeable about B-movie

B-movie

A B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture that is not definitively an arthouse or pornographic film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature....

s, including the work of Russ Meyer

Russ Meyer

Russell Albion "Russ" Meyer was a U.S. motion picture director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, actor and photographer....

. Black helped run film nights at the university before starting the Chronicle with film friend Nick Barbaro.

Black was an original board member of the Austin Film Society and is a past president of that organization. In 2000, Texas Monthly Editor Evan Smith and Black working with AFS established the Texas Film Hall of Fame.

He recently was executive producer of a documentary

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 on Texan songwriter Townes Van Zandt

Townes Van Zandt

John Townes Van Zandt , best known as Townes Van Zandt, was an American Texas Country-folk music singer-songwriter, performer, and poet...

. He also appeared in the documentary film The Devil and Daniel Johnston

The Devil and Daniel Johnston

The Devil and Daniel Johnston is a 2006 documentary film about the noted American artist Daniel Johnston. It chronicles Johnston's life from childhood up to the present, with an emphasis on his experiences with bipolar disorder, and how it manifested itself in demonic self-obsession. The film was...

as Black was an early supporter of the Texan singer.