Anime Herald

Anime Herald’s 2020 Accountability Statement

Added 2020-08-21 02:53:04 +0000 UTC

Introduction

My fellow anime fans, good evening.

Another year has passed at Anime Herald, during which we have seen changes great and small alike affect our operations, our content, and even our very way of life, itself.

In October, we made the difficult decision to turn the lights off in our news desk for the very last time. After five years of daily updates, we found that we were unable to sustain our output any longer. The burden continued to grow, and the toll it took on our team proved to be too great, as articles piled up in the editing queue, and output began to dwindle.

Rather than continue to tilt at the windmill that was the ever-growing news pile, we made a conscious decision to change our focus. As of January 1, we have reclassified our priorities, and worked to become a fanzine for the modern age, placing emphasis on the fascinating and the informative; the exciting and the inspirational. But, more important, we wanted to do god, and vowed to pay a fair wage for our articles, effective immediately, offering $50 per published piece.

As I look back on our output, which includes outstanding articles like Tynan Brooks’ When Stars Align: A History of Queer Anime, SheepLord’s A Brief History of Denmark’s Manga Industry, and Kat Callahan’s The Boxes We Keep: A Study of Love Me For Who I Am’s (FukaBoku) Approach to Gender, I’d like to think that we’ve kept these promises and then some, bringing forth content that’s fun to read, and genuinely fascinating, while helping to make the anime fan community a brighter place through our very operations.

So, as we prepare to celebrate our tenth anniversary, I’d like to take a moment to thank you, personally, for believing in us, and for backing us. Your contribution has helped us to grow, and to become an organization that we are genuinely proud to help build up, each and every day.

- Samatha Ferreira, Anime Herald's editor in chief

What Is This?

Since we went to a crowd-funded model, we have pledged to maintain full transparency as to where your money goes. As you have placed your trust in our operations, and our ability to deliver on our promises, we have made it our goal to ensure that you are never in the dark as to what we’re doing, or how we’re doing things. This includes an annual financial report, which states exactly where the money you have entrusted us with goes, and how it’s being used.

Our Finances

Over the past year, we have taken in $1943.54, after Patreon fees and taxes. In addition, I contributed $464.12 as part of a matching campaign, and we received $300 from other sources, bringing Anime Herald’s total revenues for the 2020 fiscal year to $2,707.66.

Over the past year, we have commissioned:

- 32 Long-Form articles ($1,600)

- 15 News Articles at $20 each ($300)

- Miscellaneous operational fees ($230)

As a result, our total expenses equaled $2,130 USD for the year.