What The Hell America!

Crime news has been a fixture of journalism for centuries. The true crime genre, from documentaries to podcasts to YouTube channels to TikTok explainers, has boomed over the last decade. And news publishers are looking to standalone subscription products to boost reader revenue.

USA Today is combining the two trends with Witness, a curated collection of true-crime investigative journalism produced by Gannett’s local news outlets that is designed to attract national audiences.

Witness, launched last month, costs $4.99 a month. From its About page:

With over 200 local newsrooms around the country, the USA TODAY Network is at the forefront of the true-crime genre. Our journalists are champions of investigative journalism, dedicated to uncovering the truth and serving our communities by highlighting personal stories and boosting community resilience.

Get access to a vault of cases from all over the nation. Our experienced local reporters spend months — sometimes years — digging into the crimes that rattled communities across the country. Choose from deeply reported true-crime articles, podcasts or videos. Get lost in a multi-part series/podcast or quickly consume a single story. View photographs and illustrations from real true-crime cases, along with extras like interactive maps and graphics, to help you dive deeper into stories like never before.

“We started with this topic because there’s a connective thread with journalism,” said Romina Ruiz-Goiriena, USA Today’s executive editor of investigations. “Accountability reporting is essential to the communities that we serve. So when we decided to innovate in this space and ask: ‘What exists that will connect Palm Beach with Des Moines?’ this was a big share of the work that these teams were doing over time.”

Witness is populated with crime and corruption features originally published by Gannett journalists, who are touted as “local experts who know the cases best.” The idea is that consumers won’t have to dig through a local site’s archives for an investigation or series — or pony up for separate local subscriptions to read each one. Some of the featured investigations include “The Route 40 Killer” (originally published by the Delaware News Journal in 2020), “Untested” (a USA Today series on rape kits published last year), and “Millionaire to Murder” (published by the Palm Beach Post in 2022) in one place.

Users can browse stories by category (“kidnapped,” “shocking,” “heartbreaking,” “DNA”).

“Investigations have a long tail to them in terms of interest,” Bill Cannon, Gannett’s vice president of integrated strategies and innovation, said. “They’re still relevant and valid in the community, and yet they’re buried in all of our websites. This is an opportunity to say to our customers, here’s how you can follow your interests, things that might impact your life, and dig in.”

Gannett declined to share Witness subscription numbers. Ruiz-Goiriena said that while the first phase of Witness is to curate previously published journalism, the second phase will be to produce and publish investigations exclusively for Witness. USA Today’s first paid podcast — based on its rape kit series — will launch on Witness on April 15.