Working with Nokia, its reporters have been equipped with videophone kit to file and publish stories without the need of any additional technical or editorial support.
Other news providers in the UK are already involved in similar experiments as cheap consumer level mobile technology and accompanying software is making it increasingly easy to report 'On The Fly' - where journalists can update websites with multimedia news stories live from the field.
Sky News was one of the first exponents. In August it sent reporter Derek Tedder to cover the Heathrow expansion plans.
Using just a camera-phone he updated a live micro blog on the Sky News site by filing two-paragraph text updates via Twitter and uploading photos taken at the scene, via Flickr.
This new style of reporting, says Steve Bennedik, editor of Sky News networked media, plays by the 'rules of the web' rather than older newspaper or broadcasting standards, adding a level of personalisation and intimacy to news reports.
"There is a lot of protectionism of standards in our business, quite rightly. We're very proud of the quality video output we create," he told Journalism.co.uk.
"But I think that sometimes, as we move on, we have just got to be a little bit more relaxed. The broadcasting world is a lot more democratic than it used to be and its possible now for someone to go out with a camera phone into the world and deliver to people pictures which are in an acceptable format."
It's a format that Sky has since used in several different breaking news situations, covering Hurricane Dean as it hit Mexico, the Stardust film premiere, and even the events surrounding the 10th anniversary of Diana's death.
Although Trinity Mirror Regionals has no plans, as yet, to experiment with this reporting method, Mike Hill, its head of multimedia, believes On The Fly mobile reporting is an idea that may necessitate a shift in the journalistic mindset.
"I think there needs to be a change in attitude from journalists sometimes, losing that ego and stuffiness around the fact that a story has to be a definitive account, as they see it, in one big chunk," he told Journalism.co.uk.
"I think journalists should be prepared to post what they know and also be prepared to correct and revise and say they have got it wrong."
Besides the immediacy of On The Fly reporting, he added, an additional strength of publishing live what knowledge the reporter had so far established is the potential the format offered for networking a story across a community, where readers could submit what they knew, the queries and questions they wanted answering, thus establishing the story in a broader context.
The prospect of offering reporters direct access to publish unchecked, however, is not a view that sits easily with all.
"While we need to embrace new technology, we need to be the masters of new technology. The issue about journalism On The Fly is that it seems to suggest that we are allowing our technical capability override our good judgement," said Ian Wood, assistant editor of Manchester Evening News (MEN).
"If a journalist is out and about on a story, the idea that that they can simply publish straight onto the web, for instance, I have grave concerns about."
Newsrooms had developed in part, he said, to have checks and double checks embedded in the system, something that On The Fly publishing may lack. It could be used to good effect, he added, but only in specific areas.
"On some stories it's not so important, but you never know where libel is going to get you, never know where contempt is going to get you. In my experience they come from the places where you least expect them to crop up."
He said the MEN had been running an experiment - with a range of camera-phones borrowed from Vodafone - to get reporters to file pictures and text updates for the web from the scene of newsworthy events, but with everything going through the newsdesk prior to publication, with no significant time lag.
For Wood, the issue is not just one of changing attitudes towards standards, but also one of planning the newsgathering process and redesigning the work processes to dispense with archaic protocols so that the newsroom can more appropriately reflect all forms of digital publication while maintaining the traditional values of accuracy.
"There is a web-developed protocol now where if you publish something that is wrong, wait until it gets flagged up and then you can take it off," Wood added.
"I don't subscribe to the view that it's a safe way of publication. The fact is that once it's published, it's out there. This is almost adopting TV protocols…my view is that you should be checking to make sure something is right, fair, accurate and legal before it's out."
An On The Fly system, Mike Hill added, could work by feeding bite-sized news updates of a story while the more comprehensive coverage was being compiled and checked.
"Ideally, if they [reporters] were sending stuff it would go to a newsdesk queue where an editor would read things before it went onto the site, but in some stories that's not always going to be the case and with big breaking news stories you want that immediacy, you want to be able to post that stuff straight onto the site.
"The difference is that we don't see it like a newspaper when if someone makes a mistake then it's out there till the next edition…the audience needs to be aware that it's first pass journalism, these are the initial findings of a story when a journalist first arrives and this is the first information they have been given.
"The strength of this medium is that as the story develops we can add to it and follow its changes.
"It might set off in a different direction altogether and the audience have to understand that more facts will emerge, but they will be added and the story will be constantly revised and corrected if necessary."
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