I’m Mary Steffenhagen: a journalist, audio producer, and fact-checker currently based in New York.

I’m currently the 2026 Investigative Research Fellow on journalist Ronan Farrow’s investigative team.

Before that, I produced The Devil You Know, a 15-episode limited series podcast about the Satanic Panic for host Sarah Marshall and the CBC, which Vulture and Rolling Stone named as one of the best of 2025.

As a producer for WNYC’s daily radio show, The Takeaway (RIP!), I covered everything, from the expected (tech disinformation, criminal justice, religious abuse coverups, white nationalism) to the unexpected (Broadway’s obsession with drag, strippers unionizing, human composting, trains!). My reporting on labor organizing, local politics, and social activism has also been published in outlets including Teen Vogue and City Limits, and aired on WBAI.

Once labeled a “discoverer of most obscure but deeply relevant facts” by a former boss, I’ve put those skills to use as a disinformation researcher for NewsGuard and a fact-checker for the limited series podcast Ghost Church, hosted by Jamie Loftus. I previously interned at Salon and Coda Media, where I helped produce a weekly news podcast.

I earned a masters' in investigative and audio journalism from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY in 2021. My capstone investigative series, “When Home is School,” was published by Chalkbeat and its accompanying audio documentary was a finalist for the Deadline Award from the Society of Professional Journalists in Radio or Audio Investigative Reporting in 2023.

My work has also earned awards from the Sidney Hillman Foundation (Hillman Award 2022) and the Newswomen's Club of New York (Front Page Award 2022). In 2022, I traveled to Berlin as a Fulbright scholar in the Berlin Capital Program for early-career journalists.

You might find me dodging the obstacles of the NYC streets on my bike, petting stray cats, or touching grass.