South by Southwest is kicking off this weekend, and the festival’s official print partner, the Austin Chronicle, announced several exciting new developments in their coverage of SXSW Interactive, Film and Music for 2011.

Foremost is the Chronicle‘s partnership with venerable British newspaper The Guardian. “The Chronicle will be playing host to The Guardian, enabling the lefty British stalwart to produce, print, and distribute special SXSW editions during the festival,” says Chronicle managing editor Cindy Widner. “Editorial staffs of the the two papers will also be collaborating on some weekly and special daily coverage.”

In addition to the Chronicle‘s special Interactive, Film and Music editions of their weekly publication, the paper will also publish daily editions throughout the final weekend of SXSW (Thursday, March 17-Saturday, March 19). The Chronicle also presents the Austin Music Awards on Saturday, March 19, including a set by the Meat Puppets with special guest Roky Erickson, and many more performers.

All editorial hands are on deck this year to provide up-to-the-second SXSW coverage. The Chronicle‘s mobile site has been freshly updated to include links to their SXSW blog, a comprehensive “party crawl” of unofficial ragers (including maps), and more coverage. Also, a dedicated Twitter account, @ChronSXSW, has been launched to aggregate tweets from Chronicle writers in the thick of the festival.

“With everyone from CNN to Pitchfork Media descending on Austin, South by Southwest is, once again, set to explode,” says Wells Dunbar, a Chronicle staffer coordinating the paper’s social media efforts. “But with our presence and focus this year, the Chronicle is set to absolutely dominate coverage of our hometown event.”

For more information:

Chronicle SXSW Guide: http://www.austinchronicle.com/sxsw

Austin Music Awards: http://www.austinchronicle.com/austin-music-awards/show

Chronicle Mobile site: http://www.austinchronicle.com/m

ChronSXSW on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ChronSXSW