Michael D. Bolden is a former Washington Post and Miami Herald editor. Below, he writes about his mission at Knight Foundation. 

I recently joined Knight Foundation as its editorial director. It’s a new position, emphasizing the importance we place on helping our grantees tell their stories. In the information age, communication is an essential instrument for social change.

There are tales of success and failure among our community of innovators. We see value in each one. Every story is a lesson for funders, for grantees and for people who have ideas they want to develop into great projects. My role is to help tell those stories clearly, accurately and accessibly, bringing out trends across fields and lessons learned from experience and evaluations. My responsibility is also to help make Knight’s strategy clear and accessible.

After 12 years at The Washington Post and more than 20 years in journalism, I appreciate the opportunity to climb out of the trenches and look at the landscape from Knight Foundation’s vantage point, where we see trends that cannot be spotted from the ground. I know how tough it can be to see the big picture when you’re dealing with the reality of cuts in personnel and other resources. However, I hope that my experience gives me the ability to see new storylines in what we do, which can benefit our grantees and those others on the ground.

My friends at The Washington Post are doing important work, faced with the challenges of diminishing resources. Some of the smartest people in the business work there. But smart people are everywhere trying to lead our society into the next great thing. Many of them are outside journalism but passionate about its values, and nearly all are excited about the potential of technology to inform and engage in new ways. Knight is funding many of their projects, and this is one of our spaces for sharing what we learn.

Knight’s grantees are creating new models for community development, which are valuable to other communities, even if each is slightly different. Similarly, Knight’s arts strategy entails strengthening communities by bringing art into the public consciousness. These are all stories worth telling, and many of these stories will come from you, people interested in creating the future and talking about the process. Consider me your sounding board.

Michael D. Bolden is the editorial director of Knight Foundation. He can be reached at bolden@knightfound ation.org and on Twitter at @michaelbolden.