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NPR: Arts journalism organizations in three major U.S. cities get a much-needed financial shot in the arm | See Word

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Photo: iStockphoto via NPR

A freedom song at 50

NPR: Investigating the birth of Bob Dylan's “Blowin’ in the Wind” and the different ways the song, and its central questions, remain the same.

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Photo: Simon & Schuster via Associated Press

Think tops weekend box office

Who’da thunk it? Think Like a Man, Tim Story’s romantic comedy starring Kevin Hart and a raft of newcomers, outpointed The Lucky One, with Zac Efron, and the one-time money monster, The Hunger Games, at the U.S. box office this weekend.

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Logo: © 2012 Sony Pictures. Box office data courtesy Rentrak. © 2012 Rentrak Corporation.

Jack at 75

“A man who, it sometimes seems, more than any other actor alive, happily looms like some trickster colossus over the entire Hollywood landscape ... and no one anywhere begrudges him his dominion.”

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Life.com: Photos of an actor on the brink

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HuffPo: John Farr on Jack's greatest hits

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Photo: © 1969 Arthur Schatz, Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

April, the cruelest month

CNN: Dick Clark, the eternal American teenager, television producer and a tireless champion of rock culture and its music, dies at 82 on Wednesday. 

Rolling Stone: Levon Helm, the drummer for The Band and that group’s indelible “beautifully gruff and ornery voice,” gone on Thursday at the age of 71.

Sydney Morning Herald: Greg Ham, the saxophonist whose distinctive sound made Men at Work a staple of 80’s rock, was found dead at his home in Melbourne on Thursday. He was 58.

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Photos: Clark: Associated Press via The Washington Post

The Tupac Show

Short Sharp Shock: 
Never can say goodbye: 
The resurrection 
of Makaveli 
and what it says 
about us

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Photo: Musion Systems Ltd. (UK)

NYC: Fixing a Hole

Patty Schemel, Melissa Auf der Maur, Eric Erlandson and Courtney Love took the stage at Public Assembly in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on April 14. The classic Hole lineup together for the first time in 15 years.

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YouTube

Austin: SXSW: Xroads of culture

It’s maybe the one thing that could bring together Biz Stone and Bruce Springsteen, Norah Jones and LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman (in the video below). South by Southwest, the annual collision of music, technology and pop culture that’s on through next Sunday. The objective for many: to find the Next Big Thing, or be the Next Big Thing. Mike Snider of USA Today reports on “a mash-up of extreme proportions.”

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Image: SXSW Logo: © 2012 SXSW Inc.

Iranian, American, in L.A.

Does Ahmedinajad know about this? The flashy, gold-plated antics of Iranian-American families in Los Angeles is the foundation for Shahs of Sunset, a new reality series debuting tonight on Bravo. The show offers a fresh look at Iranian culture that’s a long way from mullahs and ayatollahs, but does it trade one stereotype for another? Roshanak Taghavi of The Christian Science Monitor reports. In Television

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Photo: Colleen Hayes/Bravo

Channels of diversity

Magic Johnson and Sean (Diddy) Combs are setting the pace for a spate of new television channels aimed at African American viewers who, according to Nielsen, watch more TV than just about anyone else. With these new outlets of black life set to explode in the next few years, how will they change perceptions of black America? Anthonia Akitunde of The Root gets the lowdown. See Television

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Photo: Amanda Edwards/Getty Images

Notorious: Life after death

It’s been 15 years since the Notorious B.I.G. (Christopher Wallace), perhaps the most lyrically, rhythmically gifted rapper in the game, was slain in a hail of gunfire outside the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. His killer remains at large to this day. Rachel Shapiro of The Hollywood Reporter looks back at a life of genius and potential cut short.

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Photo: Mark Lennihan/Associated Press

Monkees’ Davy Jones dies at 66

The diminutive British heartthrob, a singer for the made-for-TV rock band that defied expectations, achieved chart-topping success and survived a Beatles-besotted public in the mid 1960’s, succumbed to a heart attack early Wednesday morning near his home in Florida. The Huffington Post reports.

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Photo: Splash, via The Huffington Post

Oscars 2012: The rundown

We got an upset, cheesecake, the Muppets and Billy Crystal in blackface. We got the pure emotional joy of Octavia Spencer and the international pride of Iran and Pakistan. We got the lyrical beauty of Cirque du Soleil and the, uh, presence of Sacha Baron Cohen. Oscars 2012 was a mixed bag. Let Melissa Bell at The Washington Post’s Celebritology blog sort it all out. So you don’t have to.

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Photo: Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press

Critic Howard Kissel dies at 69

The tousle-haired, bespectacled theater critic beloved on Broadway for decades, died Friday night in Manhattan from complications from a 2010 liver transplant. Kissel was lead theater critic at the New York Daily News for 20 years; former chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle and the New York Drama Critics Circle; and a prolific author. A frequent contributor to The Huffington Post, he blogged there as "The Cultural Tourist." Robert Simonson reports in Playbill

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Photo: Still from "Theater Talk" TV program.