The following was sent out at The Washington Post on Thursday by David Fallis, investigations editor and Eric Rich, deputy editor of investigations:
We are very excited to announce that Stefanie Ilgenfritz will be joining The Post as editor of our Long-term Investigations team.
Stefanie worked most recently at the Wall Street Journal, where for 15 years she elevated ambitious ideas into award-winning projects as she led teams reporting on the health industry. While managing a daily portfolio, Stefanie also developed, launched and landed investigations that dug deeply into the safety, business and regulation of health care.
In 2014, she helped lead a cross-desk reporting team that revealed massive fraud and abuse of the federal government’s Medicare program and won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. In 2015, she led an investigation that showed how pharmaceutical companies manipulated drug prices at the expense of patients, a project recognized as a Pulitzer finalist for explanatory reporting.
In 2020, her team helped expose the pandemic’s deadly impact on nursing homes – including the horrifying deaths of 101 people in one New Jersey facility – in a project that was recognized as a Pulitzer finalist for national reporting. And in 2024, she co-led an investigation exposing Medicare Advantage insurers that were exploiting seniors with billings for non-existent ailments. That project was a Pulitzer finalist for investigative reporting.
In other enterprise, she spearheaded stories that showed how home DNA testing upended notions of family and identity, and how newly minted Silicon Valley billionaires cashed in on exaggerated claims in the burgeoning longevity market. She has led complex financial probes that showed how some nonprofit hospitals are failing to serve the needy, despite receiving lucrative tax breaks to do so, and how hospitals often charge the uninsured the most for services. Her editing has had impact, ranging from a Justice Department probe to a Congressional investigation and a DOJ antitrust lawsuit.
At the Journal, Stefanie served as health & science coverage chief and often collaborated on projects with Investigations and other desks. She leaned heavily into data and public records to get under the hood and told stories in boundary-pushing visual and audio formats. She is known as a consummate line editor who is masterful at teasing apart complicated matters and making them clear.
Her former colleagues describe her as a gracious and thoughtful leader, and reporters said they loved working for her. “She bets on her reporters and we feel that, and that matters a lot,” said one.
Stefanie grew up in Michigan and holds a B.A. in communications from the University of Michigan (Go Blue!). She started at the Journal while earning her master’s in journalism at New York University and worked a range of jobs at Dow Jones before moving to health.
She starts on July 6. Please welcome her to The Post.
