A new US-based project is offering up to $17,000 in funding for grassroots journalism start-ups.

The New Voices initiative, run by the Institute for Interactive Journalism, and funded by the Knight Foundation, will help finance 20 hyperlocal news sites over the next two years.

Projects must be based in the US, and community groups, schools and universities are all eligible to apply.

A sister site at J-Learning.org will provide educational support for the news sites, offering training in journalism, production and income models. J-Learning will launch this Spring.

J-Lab executive director Jan Schaffer said traditional news organisations don't always pick up on micro-news at local level and believes these new projects will create opportunities for citizens to cover local news and community issues themselves.

"It's not an indictment of local news, but a supplement to it," she told dotJournalism.

"They are both valuable under the offerings of journalism, but this is good for diversity. It's small 'j' stuff, not big 'j' stuff."

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