Nick Barbaro

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Niccolo Raffaele “Nick” Barbaro (born 1952) is an American journalist and businessman who co-founded The Austin Chronicle and helped create the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival. He and his partners shaped Austin’s music scene, and he co-created SXSW in 1987 with Roland Swenson, Louis Black, and Louis Jay Meyers. Barbaro also published The Austin Chronicle, an alternative weekly newspaper he started in 1981 with Louis Black. In March 2025, he retired after 46 years and named Cassidy Frazier as the new publisher, while remaining president of the Austin Chronicle Corporation.

Barbaro is the son of Marilyn Buferd (Miss America 1946) and Francesco Barbaro, a WWII Italian submarine commander who later became a movie agent and producer. He grew up in Los Angeles and Dallas. He studied at UCLA, where he developed an interest in cinema, then moved to Austin in the mid-1970s and enrolled at the University of Texas, earning a graduate degree in Radio, Television, and Film. While at UT, he worked on The Daily Texan as a film critic. He lives in Austin with his wife, Susan Moffat.