Joe Otterson

Moderator

Joe Otterson is the TV News Editor at Variety. He first joined Variety in 2017 after working for The Wrap. Since then, Otterson has been one of Variety‘s most prolific writers, publishing nearly 8,000 stories under his byline to date. He most recently served as Senior TV Writer. He relocated from Los Angeles to New York in 2021. A native of Wisconsin, Otterson began his journalism career by covering state politics before his lifelong passion for film and television led him to Hollywood. After a few internships that were paid mostly in free lunches and as Clif Bars, he began covering the TV industry as a reporter.

Jonathan Tropper

Jonathan Tropper is an American novelist, screenwriter, and producer. He is the internationally best-selling author of six novels that have been translated into over thirty languages. He adapted his New York Times bestseller This Is Where I Leave You as a Warner Bros. film, directed by Shawn Levy, starring Jason Bateman and Tina Fey.

Tropper was the creator and Executive Producer of the Cinemax television series Banshee (2013–2016) and the HBO Max drama Warrior (2019–2023), and served as Showrunner and Executive Producer of the Apple TV+ sci-fi series See, starring Jason Momoa and Alfre Woodard. Jonathan wrote the feature films Kodachrome, starring Ed Harris, Jason Sudeikis, and Elizabeth Olsen, and The Adam Project, a sci-fi thriller starring Ryan Reynolds and directed by Shawn Levy. Most recently, he created and showran the television drama Your Friends & Neighbors for Apple TV+, starring Jon Hamm. The series premiered this past April and season 2 is currently in production in New York City. Tropper produces through his Tropper Ink shingle, which is set up at Apple TV+. Other upcoming projects include the Anya Taylor-Joy series Lucky which Tropper is adapting and running for Apple TV+, alongside Reese Witherspoon and Hello Sunshine. Production for Lucky is currently underway. Additionally, Tropper is teaming up with Levy again to write Star Wars: Starfighter for Lucasfilm and Levy to direct.

Jeffrey P. Jones

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.

Debora Cahn

Award-winning writer/producer Debora Cahn is the creator and showrunner of Netflix’s critically acclaimed drama series The Diplomat, starring Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell. Seasons 1 and 2 of the series are streaming on Netflix, and Cahn is currently in production on Season 3. Her previous credits include serving as writer and executive producer on the award-winning Showtime series Homeland, writer and producer of FX’s much-honored limited series Fosse/Verdon, writer of the HBO film Paterno, starring Al Pacino and directed by Barry Levinson, writer and co-executive producer of Martin Scorsese’s HBO series Vinyl and writer and producer on the hit ABC series Grey’s Anatomy. She began her career as a writer and producer on the landmark NBC drama The West Wing.

Cahn was most recently nominated for the Critics Choice Awards, Golden Globes, Writers and Producers Guild of America Awards in the best drama series categories for her work on The Diplomat. She was also part of the writing staff that won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series for The West Wing in 2003, and part of the writing staffs nominated for the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series for The West Wing in 2006 and Grey's Anatomy in 2007. In 2005, she won the Writers Guild of America Award for Episodic Drama for The West Wing episode ""The Supremes."" Cahn won a second Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Long Form Television Series for her work on Fosse/Verdon.