ABOUT

I’m A.Jay Wagner, an associate professor of journalism and media studies at Marquette University. My primary academic interests are government transparency, access to government information and the democratic role of journalism.

My research is focused on freedom of information (FOI), which I view as the legal and social locus of government accountability. I have won scholarly awards from AEJMC, NCA, NFOIC and from my home college, the Diederich College of Communication. I apply a range of research methods to varying degrees of success. I started with legal research and now produce light quantitative analyses and historical research as well. I’m a proponent of FOI audits and have produced two in the past (10-state audit, Illinois audit). If you have FOI or government transparency research interests—legal, quantitative or otherwise—I’d be happy to talk.

I served a two-year term on the federal FOIA Advisory Committee (2020-2022) and acted as an expert witness in a federal FOIA case (Scoville v. State). I have presented to law school classes, conducted training and provided public talks in the past. I’m generally happy to talk with any group about FOI and government transparency.

For the past seven years, I have taught a wide range of journalism, critical media and government information courses to undergraduate and graduate students at Marquette University, where I won my college’s Teacher of the Year award in 2024. I taught similar courses at Indiana University, Butler University and Bradley University. Prior and during grad school, I worked professionally as a journalist, primarily writing for the Southtown Star and Sun-Times Media in the Chicagoland and the Herald Times in Bloomington, Indiana. I have also worked in press rights advocacy, as a summer fellow at the International Press Institute in Vienna, Austria, and for six months at the McCormick Foundation in Chicago. 

I aspire to keep my CV quasi-current: CV - A.Jay Wagner

Also, below are free PDFs of my scholarly work, some clips from my days as a journalist and odds and ends that have turned up in my research that I’ve found hard to locate. I have an ongoing research project that collects FOIA Annual reports and have posted the hard-to-find ones here.

RESEARCH

The document divide: Public record requester demographics, efficacy and those left behind
News Research Journal (2025)

Tale of two requesters: How public records law experiences differ by requester type
Journalism (2024)

Owning the police: Crime data, copyright, and public information
Journal of Civic Information (2023)

To fee or not to fee: Requester attitudes toward freedom of information charges
Government Information Quarterly (2023)

Whose public virtue? Exploring freedom of information efficacy and support
Administration & Society (2022)

Popular information: An analysis of FOI use and behavior
Government Information Quarterly (2022)

Inherent Frictions and Deliberate Frustrations: Examining the Legal Variables of State FOI Law Administration
Journal of Civic Information (2021)

Piercing the veil: Examining demographic and political variables in state FOI law administration
Government Information Quarterly (2021)

Pandering, Priority or Political Weapon: Presidencies, Political Parties & the Freedom of Information Act
Communication Law & Policy (2021)

A Structural Imperative: Freedom of Information, the First Amendment and the Accountability Function of Expression
Quinnipiac Law Review (2020)

“Longstanding, Systemic Weaknesses”: Hillary Clinton’s Emails, FOIA’s Defects and Affirmative Disclosure
University of Florida Journal of Law & Public Policy (2019)

A Socialist Newspaper, the First Amendment and the Espionage Act
Journalism History First Amendment Essay Series (2019)

“Courts Coverage” in The International Encyclopedia of Journalism Studies (2019)

A Secret Police: The Lasting Impact of the 1986 FOIA Amendments
Communication Law & Policy (2018)

Essential or extravagant: considering FOIA budgets, costs and fees
Government Information Quarterly (2017)
Appendix to Essential or Extravagant

Controlling Discourse, Foreclosing Recourse; The Creep of the Glomar Response
Communication Law & Policy (2016)
Republished in The U.S. Freedom of Information Act at 50 (2018)

Evaluating FOIA's Annual Reports
An excerpt from Access Reports, a FOIA trade journal (November 2016)

A Most Essential Principle: Use and Implementation of the Freedom of Information Act, 1975-2014
Unpublished dissertation (2016)

Criminal Libel in the Land of the First Amendment
A special report for the International Press Institute (co-author Dr. Tony Fargo)

CLIPS

MISCELLANeA

CONTACT

ajaywagner@gmail.com / ajay.wagner@marquette.edu

LIGHTLY USED SOCIAL MEDIA