Biography

Jacoba Atlas is an American executive producer in television, also publishing as a journalist, music critic, novelist, screenwriter and documentary filmmaker. She won a Peabody Award, an Emmy Award and a CableACE Award for Survivors of the Holocaust (1996), a TV documentary made for TBS.

Atlas was a rock critic and film critic in the 1970s, serving as the West Coast correspondent of Melody Maker in the UK. She wrote for KRLA Beat, the Los Angeles Free Press and several other publications. She moved to television, working for NBC News in the 1980s, rising to senior producer on the Today show. She co-founded VU Productions with Pat Mitchell in 1990, writing and producing documentaries. Turner Broadcasting System hired her as an executive, after which she was an executive producer for CNN, then vice president at PBS in the 2000s.

In 2019, Atlas made Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools, airing on PBS.