Editor's Note

We tend not to spend much time telling readers how the sausage gets made, but there have been so many changes afloat lately, and quite a few new enticements rolling out all at once, we thought we'd make a special point of, well, pointing them out.

The first is mostly invisible, at least on your end: Starting this week, DFW Printing in Plano will be printing our paper; one boon to the switch will be that the entire issue will now be in full color.

More noticeable are the three new columns debuting this week and next. Our news editors Amy Kamp and Mary Tuma will be adding their lively voices to a roster that already includes Michael King's "Point Austin" and Nick Barbaro's "Public Notice." Kamp and Tuma will be trading off weeks, writing about city, state, and national issues, starting with "Notes on Kamp" in this issue, and "On the Record" in next week's issue.

In Screens, TV's brave new bingeable world will be the subject of "I Like to Watch," a bimonthly column by Jacob Clifton, previously of Gawker and Television Without Pity. You can find his first column, on the return of The X-Files in a post-Occupy TV landscape, here.

Finally, as readers learned last week, longtime editor Kate X Messer has retired after 21 years with the paper. Kate's worn so many hats it's hard to keep track, but here are a few: She's been an essential chronicler of the LGBTQIA community with her long-running "Gay Place" column, shepherded 20 "Best of Austin" issues, ran an internship program whose graduates are bylined in national newspapers and magazines, and has been an indefatigable ambassador for the Chronicle, spreading our mission from the top of a Pride parade float and in front of a journalism class, recruiting the next generation of talent to trip across these pages. She can't be replaced, but we count ourselves very lucky that her protégé Sarah Marloff will be ­taking over the "Gay Place" reins starting this week.

Sounds like a pretty good week to us.