Covering serial killers and other infamous crimes, mens rea targets 18-35 digital natives – the generation for whom, thanks to YouTube, Netflix and podcasts like Serial, true crime has become an ongoing fascination.

There’s a market for crime in the UK with three dedicated true crime TV channels reaching more than 5m people a month. But although well served by pop culture, the market is served by very few magazines.

mens rea will fill this gap with is a luxury bi-monthly consumer paid-for magazine sold in specialist book shops and by subscription.

Editorial

mens rea will cover news, including updates on notorious cases, and take an in-depth look each week at a specific case. But we will go deeper than the schlock-horror approach of other true crime mags to examine different cases with insights from psychology and law experts.

As the magazine is aimed at Gen Z and millennials, who are the most likely to watch Netflix crime documentaries, a pop culture section will detail upcoming documentaries, TV shows, movies, podcasts and books which our readers might be interested in. It could potentially be turned into an advertorial column as Cosmopolitan does for NowTV.

Revenue

Sold online for £4.99 with introductory subscription offer of £25 for the first year (six issues) while non-subscribers can pay £1.99 per quarter to view articles behind our paywall and have early access to our content.

Sponsored advertorials will include interviews with actors or directors from films/TV shows such as Jonathan Groff or David Fincher from Netflix’s Mindhunter, interviews with lawyers or detectives who were involved in a crime from a documentary such as Jerry Buting from Netflix’s Making a Murderer, breakdowns of cases in documentaries, and guest articles from authors.

Digital strategy

In a multi-touch commissioning approach, digital content will be created and repurposed for different online platforms and for print to make maximum use of resources and enable cross-promotion. Digital content will be free but articles from the print magazine will be available online through a paywall for subscribers.

A weekly newsletter will go out at 1pm every Tuesday with links to our most popular website stories.

Social media

Key platforms are Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. We’ll also use TikTok to post daily snippets from our YouTube videos and link back to the channel

Brand Extensions

Monthly mens rea podcast on a true crime case.

YouTube series, mens rea: case files, that will cover cases and include interviews with experts analysing cases.

Special editions of the magazine twice a year with an interactive bundle that includes a case that the readers can solve, exclusive to subscribers.

Talks by professional lawyers, psychologists and other analysts.

Interactive classes in topics such as how forensics are used at murder scenes.

Guided tours.

mens rea’s crime awards.

mens rea crime convention, modelled on other conventions such as US Crime Con, and featuring a weekend of crime related activities.

Mens Rea will by pitched by Laura Phillips, Helen Rodgers and Charlie Vogelsang to a panel of industry professionals in NTU’s Dragons’ Den competition for MA Magazine journalists on Wednesday March 4