Thanks for reading My World’s on Fire, a weekly newsletter about disasters from journalist Colleen Hagerty. If you found this dispatch interesting, go ahead and subscribe for free!

In last week's newsletter, I shared a survey to check in with you all about your experience with this newsletter—what you like or dislike; what you want to see more or less. This feedback is really essential for me in shaping My World's on Fire and deciding what sort of reporting I invest my time and resources in, so first, a huge thanks to everyone who filled it out.

One of the responses that struck me in particular noted that MWOF is "easy to understand as someone without much prior knowledge." 18 months and 64 newsletters into this work, I've been thinking a lot about how I can make this a more informative and necessary read for subscribers, and one way I hope to do that is by focusing more on this aspect: providing explanations of programs, concepts, terminology etc. that come up when you're dealing with or following along with coverage about a disaster.

You've seen this sort of approach before in my newsletters about FEMA's BRIC program, "zombie fires," or digging into the debate around the term "natural disaster." But I'm hoping now to build on these occasional posts to instead make this a recurring series informed by experts that will help demystify the disaster landscape.

Part of what really excites me about this idea is the chance to hear from all of you about the questions you have that I could address—or the expertise you have in this field that you'd be willing to share. For an example of what I'm looking for from experts, I really loved this newsletter about disaster misconceptions and would welcome the chance to let you expand on some topics like those. Or, if you're knowledgeable about some particularly wonky policies that actually play a huge role in our system, I would love to hear about it! I consider disaster survivors experts, as well, and I always value anything you're comfortable sharing your about experience, particularly if it is something you think could help another frontline community.

So...

I added a few new questions on this topic to the survey I posted last week, and I would really appreciate your feedback on this idea, as well as the newsletter overall. What I'm really hoping is to create with this series is a go-to library that can serve as an entry point for disaster reporting—issues that can be easily shared with those in need of this information and that I can link back to in future editions so that I can keep deepening my reporting here without losing that accessibility.

My World's on Fire Subscriber Survey — docs.google.com

Thank you so much for your time! The information you provide will only be used by me to make this newsletter better for readers like you.

As always...

thank you for reading and subscribing to My World’s on Fire. This newsletter is helping people all around the world better understand “these uncertain times” because of readers like you who put forward a few dollars each month on Patreon.

It also means the world to me when you post about it on social media like Kathryn Shea Duncan did:

Now, here’s a little something for reading to the end.

Colleen