The Community Support Journalist will report on a variety of coaching subject areas, including executive coaching, business coaching and life coaching. The site will include news of the business of coaching, personality pieces about coaches, coaching related human interest stories, investigative journalism, stories about notable research and stories on coaching achievements, niches and spin-offs.

The work of the CSJ and community’s membership content contributions will appear primarily online at The Coaching Commons (http://www.coachingcommons.org). The CSJ will serve as one of the site’s staff bloggers, aggregating industry news as well doing original reporting as outlined above.

Click here for a full job description and information on how to apply.

Rather than listening to the information-is free crowd, we should all be trying to figure out this dilemma as written about in The New York Times today:

Consumers are using their mobile phones to download tens of millions of games, songs, ring tones and video programs. And they shell out money for these items, even as they resist paying for similar digital goodies online using their computers.

It is a curious equation: pay for stuff on a tiny, low-resolution screen while getting some of the very same games and video free on a fancy widescreen monitor.

Here is part of the problem:

Content developers say consumers like the instant gratification of downloading on the go. By contrast, PC users have to go through a few more steps to pay for items online because, most of the time, they must enter credit card information for each purchase.

Research shows that the more steps a person must take to pay, the less likely he is to buy something. Besides, people have simply become used to paying for things on the phone.

Programs exist for one click payments at news sites. Bill Densmore has been pushing his ClickShare and Information Valet Project for years.

I don’t want to gouge audiences by forcing them to overpay for information, but I do want enough money available to pay journalists to provide high quality news and information. Paying for news would be a tiny fraction of all the money that is now being paid for content from games to ring tones. We can solve this problem. Rather than information is free, our mantra should be that high quality information is valuable and worthy of a few micro payments here and there.

You can learn more about the Center here.

The job description is:

Kennesaw State University invites applications for the position of Director of its new Center for Sustainable Journalism. The Center is funded in part by a pledge from The Harnisch Foundation of $1.5 million spread over a five-year period to advance research aimed at discovering innovative ways to produce financially sustainable, high quality and ethically sound journalism. The Director’s tasks will include, but not be limited to, overseeing the daily operation of the Center, helping in the development of innovative ways to produce sustainable journalism and producing conferences, workshops and other activities aimed at fulfilling the Center’s mission.

The ideal candidate will have experience in both the editorial and management sides of journalism operations, have experience in running workshops and conferences, have experience in providing outreach to local communities and other stakeholders from diverse cultural backgrounds, be in the forefront of understanding the digital revolution, have a track record of positive results in fundraising, have experience in working in and with academic institutions, be well versed in budgetary matters, have entrepreneurial experience and have a well earned, highly regarded reputation within the field of journalism.

Bachelor’s degree and 7+ years comparable/related experience; management/supervisory skills are required. Salary commensurate with experience.

Qualified applicants should apply online here.

Kennesaw State University is located in the Atlanta Metro Region and with more than 21,000 students is the third largest university in the Georgia state system.

Compare this video with this upbeat, let’s bring out the talking points of the future of online journalism commentary by Michelle Nicolosi, executive producer of the new SeattlePI.com.

Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead.

When we shift our attention from ’save newspapers’ to ’save society’, the imperative changes from ‘preserve the current institutions’ to ‘do whatever works.’ And what works today isn’t the same as what used to work.

He adds:

Any experiment … designed to provide new models for journalism is going to be an improvement over hiding from the real, especially in a year when, for many papers, the unthinkable future is already in the past.

For the next few decades, journalism will be made up of overlapping special cases. Many of these models will rely on amateurs as researchers and writers. Many of these models will rely on sponsorship or grants or endowments instead of revenues. Many of these models will rely on excitable 14 year olds distributing the results. Many of these models will fail. No one experiment is going to replace what we are now losing with the demise of news on paper, but over time, the collection of new experiments that do work might give us the reporting we need.

I said less complicated, not necessarily less depressing, but maybe in one of those stories or in a reading of them all your Eureka moment will arrive.

Welcome to J-startup news, a place for news people to discuss, rate and share news and commentary about journalism startups, new business models for news, hacker journalism and anything else that falls along these lines.

Here is its widget:

Its founder adds:

I hope this becomes a place where startups announce their projects, ask for help and post job openings.

Another handy thing that J-Startup News will do is create a central place for the best news from all the folks covering the industry on blogs and pro sites. For the last few months I’d been wishing for a site like this to give me all the best links right now in one place. I am morally opposed to RSS readers so social news sites are how I find stuff I want to read. There wasn’t one for news people who want to read about “the new news.” So now we’ve got one.

…The experience of consuming news on the web today fails to take full advantage of the power of technology. It doesn’t understand what users want in order to give them what they need. When I go to a site like the New York Times or the San Jose Mercury, it should know what I am interested in and what has changed since my last visit. If I read the story on the US stimulus package only six hours ago, then just show me the updates the reporter has filed since then (and the most interesting responses from readers, bloggers, or other sources). If Thomas Friedman has filed a column since I last checked, tell me that on the front page. Beyond that, present to me a front page rich with interesting content selected by smart editors, customized based on my reading habits (tracked with my permission). Browsing a newspaper is rewarding and serendipitous, and doing it online should be even better. This will not by itself solve the newspapers’ business problems, but our heritage suggests that creating a superior user experience is the best place to start.

He adds:

We need to make it easier for the experts, journalists, and editors that we actually trust to publish their work under an authorship model that is authenticated and extensible, and then to monetize in a meaningful way. We need to make it easier for a user who sees one piece by an expert he likes to search through that expert’s entire body of work. Then our users will be able to benefit from the best of both worlds: thoughtful and spontaneous, long form and short, of the ages and in the moment.

Then he speaks of the power of facts:

Putting the power to publish and consume content into the hands of more people in more places enables everyone to start conversations with facts. With facts, negotiations can become less about who yells louder, but about who has the stronger data. They can also be an equalizer that enables better decisions and more civil discourse.

He adds:

Here at Google the words of every colleague, from associates to vice presidents, carry the same weight so long as they are backed by data. (If you don’t think we live up to this standard then please feel free to correct me … but you better have the facts to prove it!!!)

This is a fascinating effort, I think. Since the idea is that these local news operations will be “crowdsourced” or community-financed, in many ways it reminds me of Spot.us, the “crowd-funded” journalism effort from David Cohn — and in fact, the two are sharing ideas and sit on each other’s advisory boards (Bill Densmore of the Media Giraffe Project and Lisa Williams of Placeblogger are also on the Representative Journalism advisory board). It’s not clear whether RepJ or Spot.us are viable long-term models for journalism, but there’s no question they are both interesting experiments. The Locally Grown Northfield project in particular seems like a thriving model for a local, community-driven news operation — and one that is worth keeping an eye on.

Here is why I like our Locally Grown trial: almost everyday someone on the project tries something just a little different, adds another idea. It is not static and each idea seems to bring us a little closer to the goal of figuring out how to get the community more involved and to help fund journalism.

The interview is an excellent way to learn more about the new Center and what our plans for it are.

Moro is chair of the Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group in the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC).