Stephanie Hughes

Senior Reporter

Stephanie Hughes is a senior reporter at Marketplace. She’s focused on education and the economy, and is based in Baltimore.

She's reported on topics including the effectiveness of technology used by schools to prevent violence, startups that translate global climate data for homebuyers, and why theater majors are getting jobs writing for chatbots.

Previously, she worked as a producer for Bloomberg, where she covered finance, technology, and economics. Before that, she worked as the senior producer for “Maryland Morning,” broadcast on WYPR, the NPR affiliate in Baltimore. She’s also reported for other media outlets, including NPR’s “Morning Edition,” “All Things Considered,” “The Takeaway,” and Salon.

At WYPR, she helped produce the year-long, multi-platform series “The Lines Between Us,” which won a 2014 duPont-Columbia Award. She’s also interested in using crowdsourcing to create online projects, such as this interactive map of flags around Maryland, made from listener contributions.

A native of southern Delaware, Stephanie graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in communications, studying at the Annenberg School. Before she found her way to radio, she worked in the children’s division of the publishing house Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

Latest from Stephanie Hughes

Feb 1, 2019
Facebook seems to be doing everything wrong, but it’s working for them…
LOIC VENANCE/AFP/Getty Images
A busy week in Facebook news: One report said it was paying people to use a research app that sucked up basically all the activities on their phone. That got Facebook in huge trouble with Apple. Meanwhile, two senators were demanding answers about kids buying things on Facebook without their parents’ knowledge. Then, on Wednesday, the company reported its earnings and… they were fantastic. The number of users everywhere, including in the U.S., was up, along with increased ad revenue. A tech reporter for The New York Times, Mike Isaac covers all of these stories. Molly Wood asks him if it’s possible people just actually don’t care about their privacy after all. Today’s show is sponsored by Triple Byte_JD and Evident.
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Jan 31, 2019
5G networks could pose a cybersecurity risk. Who’s in charge of making sure they don’t?
The United States and several other countries have made it clear that they don’t want hardware from Chinese telecom giant Huawei to be part of future fifth-generation wireless networks. They’re worried that Huawei could install back doors in a 5G network that could let the Chinese government, companies or hackers spy on information crossing that network. But no matter who is building a 5G network, there will be cybersecurity threats. So who’s in charge of making sure that protection against hacking, spying or other cyberthreats is built in from the ground up? Molly Wood talks with Tom Wheeler, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 2013 to 2017. He’s now a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. He says the government should be in charge. Today’s show is sponsored by Pitney Bowes and Indeed.
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Jan 30, 2019
What might help Apple sell more iPhones? Cheaper iPhones
Apple released its earnings Tuesday afternoon, and although it met its lowered expectations, revenue from iPhones was down 15 percent over the same quarter last year, and the future trend is still down. For years, Apple’s smartphone strategy has been to make premium devices with a premium price tag. The starting price is basically $1,000 for a new flagship iPhone. But those prices are hard to swallow in China and India, markets Apple is depending on to grow its global market share. Even here in the United States, consumers aren’t upgrading their phones as much as they used to. Molly Wood talks with Julie Ask, principal analyst at Forrester Research, about whether Apple can keep commanding such high prices. Today’s show is sponsored by Kronos, the University of Florida Warrington College of Business and Lenovo for Small Business.
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Jan 29, 2019
Costs are falling for renewable energy stored in batteries
One of the major challenges of using renewable energy like wind or solar is that there’s overproduction. The sun shines and the wind blows mostly during the day but then drops off at night — when people tend to use the most power. Batteries can help smooth out those peaks and valleys, but cost has limited wider adoption. Now battery storage is maturing as an industry. So what does that mean for regular people? Marketplace’s Jed Kim talks with Ravi Manghani, director of energy storage at energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie, who says the tech is getting to houses through transmission lines, maybe even yours. Today’s show is sponsored by Pitney Bowes and WellFrame.
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Jan 28, 2019
Your social media posts are likely way more predictable than you think
Social media was invented to keep up with friends, but if you’re fed up with data leaks and privacy concerns, you might decide to quit. It turns out social media may not even need you to know you, because your friends and their posts are pretty good indicators of who you are. In a new study, scientists took to Twitter and found people who interacted regularly. By analyzing the tweets of just eight or nine of a user’s friends, they could predict the kinds of things the original user would post. Marketplace’s Jed Kim talks with Jim Bagrow, a professor at the University of Vermont who led the study. Today’s show is sponsored by the University of Florida Warrington College of Business and Triple Byte.
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Jan 25, 2019
An American’s quest to track down his digital data… in the UK
Many people are still active on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram despite digital privacy concerns. But even if you set out to truly understand all the information tech companies have about you, it’s close to impossible to get your hands on all of the data. Witness the plight of one American professor who’s waging a multiyear legal battle against political data firm Cambridge Analytica, trying to see what it collected, bought and sold about him. It’s a David and Goliath story, and in this case, David is David Carroll, a media design professor in New York. Marketplace’s Jed Kim talks about Carroll’s quest with Issie Lapowsky, a senior writer at Wired. Today’s show is sponsored by Pitney Bowes and Indeed.
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Jan 24, 2019
Using smartphones to better understand homelessness
Each year, the Department of Housing and Urban Development asks local governments to count the number of homeless people in their areas. The task on the ground falls to officials partnered with nonprofits and volunteers. The data is required if you want federal dollars to address homelessness. The count includes those staying in shelters and transitional housing, but in odd-numbered years, like this one, people also go out on the streets to count the homeless population sleeping on sidewalks and in cars. It’s a massive undertaking, especially in regions with high levels of homelessness, like Southern California. This year, some areas near Los Angeles are using an app to improve the quality of data they collect. It’s a big change from the pen and paper method still used by most. Marketplace’s Jed Kim talks with Jill Replogle, the Orange County reporter for Southern California Public Radio. The O.C. is one of the places using the new tech, and she joined the count and downloaded the app to see how it works. Today’s show is sponsored by the University of Florida Warrington College of Business and WellFrame.
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Jan 23, 2019
There’s tons of money in venture capital, as long as you’re a big company
In 2018 venture capital firms invested $130 billion in private companies — an all-time high. Sounds like a thriving startup ecosystem, right? The movie industry similarly hit a new high in 2018… because ticket prices were way higher and people paid more to go to a few big blockbusters. A similar thing happened with venture capital: Firms invested a lot of money in a few big blockbuster companies, like $1.3 billion in Fortnite maker Epic Games, or they made big investments in so-called “unicorn” companies with billion-dollar valuations, such as Uber or Airbnb or Pinterest. How is this pattern changing the landscape for smaller startups? Molly Wood talks with Bobby Franklin, president and CEO of the National Venture Capital Association, about where all the money is going. Today’s show is sponsored by Pitney Bowes and WellFrame.
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Jan 22, 2019
Why more streaming services won’t necessarily mean better prices
In 2019, media giants Disney and Warner both plan to enter the streaming service fray, as if there weren’t a whole lot of on-demand content options already out there. Streaming has definitely disrupted the way we watch TV. What about the way we pay for it? With predictions of widespread cord cutting and the demise of cable television, are we actually seeing that? Marketplace’s Jed Kim talks with Brian Wieser, who focuses on media and advertising as a senior analyst at Pivotal Research Group. Today show is sponsored by the University of Florida Warrington College of Business and Triple Byte_JD.
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Jan 21, 2019
The blockchain is coming to Wall Street
In 2018, ICOs, or initial coin offerings, were the hot new thing in startup fundraising. A company could raise money by selling you a little bit of value or equity in the form of a digital coin, similar to bitcoin but specific to that company. ICOs raised about $22 billion, or so we think. It’s hard to know because the practice has been unregulated. A lot of them turned out to be scams. The Securities and Exchange Commission started fining celebrities like Floyd Mayweather and DJ Khaled over sketchy paid promotions for ICOs. It got weird, and now it’s regulation time. That means that future ICOs and their digital coins might start to look a lot more like good old-fashioned stock, except traded on the blockchain, and that has big ramifications for Wall Street. Molly Wood talks with Kristen Howell, a partner with the law firm Fox Rothschild who helps companies create ICOs. Today’s show is sponsored by Kronos, Mozilla/Firefox and Lenovo for Small Business.
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Stephanie Hughes

Latest from Stephanie Hughes