Okay, you made it past the page three second cover. That’s good. So, welcome to the Chronicle Summer Smut/Back to School issue.
No, we didn’t really plan the timing that way, but, well, sometimes things just happen, you know? So here we are, with our brown paper wrapper cover, the very week the little kiddies come traipsing in for what AISD so quaintly calls its “fall” semester. Damn. (Meanwhile, UT — where the students are supposed to be having sex — doesn’t come back for another two weeks. Double damn.)
So no, it’s not really a back-to-school issue. But here’s a connection, if you insist on there being one: Consider it as an ironic commentary on the fact that AISD has instituted a new Sexual Harassment and Bullying policy this year (www.austin.isd.tenet.edu/campuses/harrass_eng.html,though there’s some other language circulating as well). Yeah, that’s the ticket: If it just doesn’t make sense any other way you look at it, call it irony. If you don’t get the joke, it’s your fault.
Also this issue: A report from the GOP Convention in Philadelphia (p.24) may also serve as a preview of things to come at the Chronicle this fall. Its author, Louis Dubose, will be stepping in as our Politics editor as of next issue — just in time for a numbingly busy political season, featuring far-reaching road, rail, and development proposals, plus a (not so) favorite-son presidential candidate on the November ballot. Dubose has written for the Chronicle before, but he’s far better known for his 13 years as editor of The Texas Observer — “the biggest little muckraker in Texas, since 1954” — and we’re excited to be working more closely together.
And don’t worry, current Politics editor Amy Smith isn’t going anywhere; if anything, you’ll be seeing her byline more often in the future issues, as she returns to her first love of writing and reporting. Amy’s the one who started this chain of events a couple of months ago — coming to editor Louis Black and me to say that she felt like a “tethered horse,” I believe the phrase was, and that she wanted to get out of the office to cover some stories herself, as opposed to the more supervisory role she’d been in for the last four years.
While we were still trying to figure out how to deal with this, we heard the news that Dubose was stepping down from the Observer. Hmmm. Might he be persuaded to get back into the deadline grind, if we could work out the right sort of offer? After all, he’d be working with the deepest, most talented politics staff we’ve ever had: assistant Politics editor Erica Barnett, staff writers Mike Clark-Madison, Robert Bryce, Kevin Fullerton, and Smith, plus a host of freelancers, and newly promoted managing editor Cindy Widner. Might that, and a new citywide audience, be enough of a lure?
Turns out it was. And since Amy was willing to be flexible on her schedule, we bought enough time for Lou to take a break and finish up a couple of writing projects he was working on, and, well, we’ll start to see the results next week. Call it a case of lucky timing — sort of like our Back to School Smut Issue, come to think of it.
(Note to self: Next year, buy a calendar.) 
This article appears in August 11 • 2000.