Editorials

The Shredder: Opportunity Cost In Action


public domain - shredderAs many of you know, we recently started a series of short-form reviews known collectively as “The Shredder.” Unlike our normal long-form reviews, these will be shorter articles, focusing mainly on impressions of a set portion of a show. The Shredder seems like an odd concept, given that we’ve taken strides to beef up our long-form reviews over the past three years. However, I’ve decided to introduce the concept as an experiment in the study of opportunity costs.

Opportunity cost is an economic term, which is strictly defined as follows:

the opportunities forgone in the choice of one expenditure over others.

In plain english, this means that opportunity cost is the cost of a task or object in terms that sometimes, but don’t necessarily have to money. Time, energy, even natural resources can be seen as currency in opportunity costs. So, for example, the opportunity costs of buying a dishwasher could be the time saved doing dishes, versus the costs of going on a vacation today.

In the scope of Anime Herald, the opportunity cost breakdown was this:

  • An average long-form review takes 1-3 days to complete
  • An average article takes 3-4 hours to complete
  • A press release takes 15-20 minutes to complete

Now, the long-form reviews are in constant competition with the daily articles. So a 1-3 day article write-up quickly turns into one to two weeks, if not longer, as we consistently update with articles and press release write-ups. Because of this, the opportunity costs become pretty clear. We can spend that 1-3 days doing long-form reviews, or we can keep pushing them to the back-burner for other content. However, anime is our focus, and we want to keep providing coverage of new titles to you, dear readers.

And from this, a compromise was made. The Shredder, which is a shorter article, takes 3-4 hours to complete, on par with our nightly articles. However, it does lack the same level of detail as our long-form reviews. So the opportunity cost is time versus detail.

This is not a bad thing, though. Because we can focus on getting more titles out, we can reserve our long-form reviews for far bigger titles, or shows that we feel are more befitting of the longer review. The result is that we can provide a spotlight as we need it, and a far more regular flow of content that will hit our page for you, dear readers.

So, as we play and tweak our format for The Shredder, please don’t hesitate to let us know what you like, and what you don’t like. We’ll be listening, and we hope you enjoy what comes from us going forward!

About the author

Samantha Ferreira

Samantha Ferreira is Anime Herald’s founder and editor-in-chief. A Rhode Island native, Samantha has been an anime fan since 1992, and an active member of the anime press since 2002, when she began working as a reviewer for Anime Dream. She launched Anime Herald in 2010, and continues to oversee its operations to this day. Outside of journalism, Samantha actively studies the history of the North American anime fandom and industry, with a particular focus on the 2000s anime boom and bust. She’s a huge fan of all things Sakura Wars, and maintains series fansite Combat Revue Review when she has free time available. When not in the Anime Herald Discord, Samantha can typically be found on Bluesky.

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