Our Story - The Peabody Awards

Jeffrey P. Jones, Ph.D., is the Executive Director of the George Foster Peabody Awards at the University of Georgia, and Lambdin Kay Chair for the Peabodys in the Department of Entertainment & Media Studies. Jones became only the fifth director of the Peabody Awards in 2013. Prior to that, he was Director of the Institute of Humanities at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. He holds a Ph.D. in Radio-TV-Film from The University of Texas at Austin, as well as a Masters and Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from Auburn University.

Under Jones’s leadership, television specials of the awards ceremony were broadcast nationally on Pivot, PBS, and Fusion. He established the first-ever Boards of Directors (representing media on both East and West Coasts) comprised of top-level media entertainment industry executives, as well as journalists, documentarians, radio/podcasters, public media, and foundation executives. In partnership with Facebook, he created the Peabody Futures of Media Award in 2015 to recognize digital storytelling excellence in formats such as video games, virtual reality, interactive documentaries, data journalism, and more. In 2020, Peabody created a new and separate Board of Jurors to begin formally awarding Peabody Awards to Interactive and Immersive Media, launching the initiative with a set of “legacy” award winners in 2022 for groundbreaking and iconic works from previous decades.

During the Covid Pandemic of 2020-22, Peabody moved its annual celebration of winners online, utilizing social media for a much broader awareness of winning stories. In 2021, the program also launched its weekly newsletter of viewing recommendations. In 2023, the annual awards ceremony will take place in Los Angeles for the first time in the program’s 83-year history.

Professor Jones is the author and editor of six books, including “Entertaining Politics: Satiric Television and Civic Engagement,” “Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the Post-Network Era,” and “The Essential HBO Reader.” Most recently, co-edited with Ethan Thompson and Lucas Hatlan, is “Television History, the Peabody Archives, and Cultural Memory” through the University of Georgia Press. His research and teaching focuses on popular politics, or the ways in which politics are engaged through popular culture. He hails from Auburn, Alabama, has one son, and is a semi-professional drummer.