Count National Public Radio among the recent media sources to focus on local news coverage as a way to survive in the publishing industry these days.

The public broadcaster recently received a $3 million grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The two-year experiment will focus on 12 as yet unnamed stations around the U.S. and incorporate local news coverage using regional journalists.

Typically, NPR's coverage of stories falls outside the norm of what the mainstream media reports. One of the goals with this new project will be to add to a stable of journalists covering stories locally that may have slipped under the radar of major outlets.

A more important challenge that goes hand in hand here also becomes about maintaining journalistic standards.

If paid "hyperlocal" is the wave of the future (so-called because its focus is on local stories over national ones), it could be a new opportunity for reporters facing budget cuts at newspapers too. The advantage for any online news organization like NPR is access to a wider pool of talent by reaching out to those reporters adapting to the online space.

Unlike regular bloggers, that talent would likely already have a network of established sources to call on for stories. This in addition to also knowing established principles of journalism, an issue that arises when discussing accuracy in reporting and the proliferation of "citizen" bloggers and journalists.

The grant will cover NPR's radio and TV stations and also allow their content to be embedded on websites through downloadable players.