James T. (Jay) Hamilton is Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education at Stanford University, Hearst Professor of Communication, and Director of the Stanford Journalism Program in the School of Humanities and Sciences (H&S). During the 2024-25 academic year, Jay served as interim co-faculty director of Stanford Impact Labs (SIL) with Shelley Correll.
Jay is an economist who studies how information provision changes behavior by individuals, companies, and governments. His work has focused on environmental justice, the U.S. EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory program, the market for television violence, and the economics of public affairs reporting.
Jay’s research in the field of computational journalism explores how the costs of story discovery can be reduced through better use of data and algorithms. Through his work at the Stanford Journalism Program, he encourages partnerships between media organizations and universities to support accountability reporting. His book, Democracy’s Detectives: The Economics of Investigative Reporting, examines the market for investigative news. His most recent book, You Got In! Now What? offers lessons based on the experience of Stanford alums and faculty on how to navigate college.
Jay is a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). When he is not thinking about the role of journalism in democracy, he enjoys reading histories of the 1960s, watching political dramas set in Washington DC, and consuming popular culture while maintaining this counts as “research.”