Mark Henderson tells us about The 016, a social network for local news in Central Mass.

On the latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I fall into our third season with an interview with Mark Henderson, an old friend of the pod and a pioneer in online media. Mark is a journalist and technologist with decades of experience in news. He is the founder and CEO of The 016, a first-of-its-kind news publisher and distributor focused on Worcester, Massachusetts.

Mark worked at the Telegram & Gazette, Worcester’s daily newspaper, from 1990 to 2014. He spent 19 years in the newsroom, rising to the position of assistant sports editor before being named deputy managing editor for technology in 2005. In 2009, he was named digital director, where he launched the first paywall at a New York Times Co. newspaper. He founded the Worcester Sun, a subscription news site that launched in August 2015 and suspended publication in February 2018.

Mark was also one of the very first people we interviewed for our book, “What Works in Community News.” Although Mark is not in the book, I wrote up our conversation for Nieman Lab.

I’ve also got a Quick Take on a report from the Poynter Institute, a leading journalism education organization based in St. Petersburg, Florida, that offers a clear-eyed assessment of why there are reasons to be optimistic about the future of journalism despite the very real challenges that we still face.

Ellen recounts a Knight Science Journalism Program panel and awards ceremony last week at MIT. The program honored Cicero Independiente, a nonprofit newsroom in the Chicago area. The staff won for an innovative project that examined toxic air.

You can listen to our conversation here and access an AI-generated transcript. You can also subscribe through your favorite podcast app.