Throughout the year, Bill Foster keeps an eye out for the best films about music. Now in its 28th year, the NorthWest Film Center's Reel Music Festival is a showcase for 25 to 30 of some of the world's most interesting, most underappreciated films about musicians, performances and the world around them.

Dr. Cornel West is a prominent and provocative public intellectual dedicated to democracy ... Here, he discusses his participation in "America's Next Chapter," a forum hosted by Tavis Smiley where a panel of luminaries will wrestle with the question, "How do we make America as good as its promise?"

U.S. District of Oregon Judge Robert E. Jones  sentenced rapper Kenny Mack to more than seven years in federal prison for being a felon in possession of a firearm.

DETROIT (AP) -- Aretha Franklin says the undisclosed ailment that led the Grammy Award-winning singer to have surgery in Detroit has been resolved. But she's not saying what was wrong.

The line-up for this year's POH HOP is out. The 12^th annual Portland Oregon Hip Hop Festival – a four-day extravaganza of some of the biggest and most-promising acts in Northwest hip-hop -- promises to be one of the biggest and best. Check back to The Skanner News in the coming weeks for more coverage of the artists featured at this year's festival.

Speaker and author Kevin Carroll will be joining Film Action Oregon at the Hollywood Theatre for a "Pep Rally for the Arts" to celebrate the University of Oregon's invitation to play in the BCS National Championship game.

From artistic expression in Harlem and in Haiti to youthful hopes of overcoming war and poverty in Sierra Leone and Colombia, the third season of AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange transports viewers into the lives of men and women from different corners of the African Diaspora.

Tavis Talks about His Latest Special Report

Bruno Mars and Katy Perry are  iTunes best selling songs for Christmas week; Daft Punk and the cast of Glee top the Album list.

If 2010 made you feel like you wanted to hide in a closet and bury yourself under all the coats, then you were probably just trying to escape the storm of sleaze hurled this year by some of entertainment's finest -- or maybe you were just the woman Charlie Sheen called for that infamous late-night hookup.