Dr. Bethany Usher

Dr Bethany Usher is an award-winning crime journalist who worked for national and regional newspapers and a senior lecturer at Newcastle University. She is the author of Journalism and Crime which tracks the history of crime news, journalism and true crime from earliest origins in “bloody murder”, witch and highwaymen pamphlets of the 16th century to the complex digital ecosystems of the 2020s.

Dr Usher argues that producers and audiences need to rethink their own place in fuelling unethical dimensions of journalistic crime content and campaigns for a new code-of-practice to forefront victims.

She is also the author of Journalism and Celebrity, is an expert on dimensions of fame, notoriety and attack journalism, and writes for a range of magazines and newspapers.