The Crime Ledger uses AI to organise research, not craft arguments
Abhishek Raj is Founder & Editor-in-Chief of The Crime Ledger, a crime journalism site that focuses on psychology, evidence and criminal justice rather than spectacle. He has adopted AI for research organisation, fact-checking and stress-testing theories while keeping article arguments and interpretation strictly human-made.
Use AI for the routine, verifiable work – sorting research, checking facts and testing hypotheses – but keep the interpretive and argumentative tasks human. In crime journalism, depth and sensitive judgement matter more than faster output.
What’s the quick origin story of your business, and what makes what you do genuinely different from the other options your customers are looking at?
I founded The Crime Ledger under my writing name, Karma Gray, to pursue a form of crime journalism centred on psychology, evidence and criminal justice rather than spectacle. Its distinguishing principle is a deliberately non-sensational approach to crime writing.
Where does most of your new business come from today, and where do you wish it came from?
Most readers currently discover The Crime Ledger organically through search, LinkedIn and referrals. I would like to build a larger audience that seeks out Karma Gray and The Crime Ledger specifically for serious crime analysis, criminological research and case studies.
What’s one thing you’ve actually handed over to AI in the last year, and one thing you tried it on and went back to doing the human way?
I use AI for research organisation, fact-checking and stress-testing theories. I tried using it to develop article arguments, but found the results too shallow, so I went back to forming them myself.
Have you noticed a change in how customers find you or what they already know before they reach out? Is anyone arriving through AI assistants like ChatGPT yet?
Most people still find us through search, LinkedIn and word of mouth. I’ve also seen AI crawlers hit The Crime Ledger multiple times, so the site is clearly being picked up by AI systems. I just don’t have enough data yet to say people are actually arriving through ChatGPT or other assistants.
If you were advising someone in your industry on all of this for the next 12 months, what would you tell them to actually do, and what would you tell them to ignore?
Use AI for the boring and useful stuff: sorting research, checking facts, testing ideas. Do not let it do your thinking for you. In crime writing especially, intelligent sensitivity matters more than speed of output.
Thank you to Abhishek Raj and the team at The Crime Ledger for sharing what actually worked with Leaders Perception readers.
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