He attended the University of Texas at Austin on a Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowship (FLAS) in 1993, before changing career paths and earning a PhD in radio-TV-film in 1999.

Jones has held teaching positions at colleges and universities in Texas, Alabama, Maryland, Virginia, and Georgia, where he has taught courses in television, journalism, documentary, political communication, law and policy, new media, and popular culture.

[2] Under his tenure, the awards ceremony was changed from a weekday luncheon held at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City to a weekend dinner with red carpet at Cipriani Wall Street in downtown Manhattan.

In 2019, an East Coast Board of Directors[9] was created with leaders from journalism, radio, podcasting, documentary, public media, technology, and philanthropy.

He has written extensively on Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher, Michael Moore, Saturday Night Live, as well as cable and network talk shows and Fox News.