After starting as a general assignment reporter and obit writer for small city newspapers in Ohio and Tennessee, Jennings spent several years as a business journalist in London and Washington before moving into documentary television production in 1996. Since then he has worked on dozens of films and produced documentaries covering a spectrum of subjects, from the science of heart transplantation to hard investigations into disaster aid graft, big-city police cover-ups and international intelligence agency failures. He has written, produced and directed films that have appeared on PBS, HBO, National Geographic and Discovery and has collaborated with the most esteemed names in journalism.
Jennings has been producing for PBS FRONTLINE since 2009, when he first collaborated with the investigative reporting group ProPublica. His resulting film,Law and Disorder, about police shootings of civilians during the week after Katrina, won the prestigious George Polk Award for television reporting and was nominated for an Emmy Award. Jennings subsequently produced Doctor Hotspot (2012) and Being Mortal (2015) with surgeon and New Yorker writer Atul Gawande and the Emmy-nominated In addition to two Polk Awards, Jennings has also won two national Emmy Awards, the duPont-Columbia Silver Baton Award, the Overseas Press Club Award, the Edward R. Murrow Award and three Writers Guild of America Awards.
Jennings teaches documentary writing and development at NYU’s celebrated film school. He has been an active member of the WGA/WGAE since 2000.
Thought Gallery Channel:
Backstage Conversations