The Express and Echo in Devon is preparing to embark on its most ambitious multimedia project to date.

Readers will be able to follow a three-week rape trial as it happens in online reports, via text alerts, through online video updates and in the newspaper itself.

The victim of the alleged rape and assault is a 48-year-old mother who was found unconscious in a cul-de-sac.

Today and tomorrow there will be legal arguments from prosecution and defence barristers before the judge with the trial starting on Monday.

Express & Echo readers can for the first time receive text alerts of breaking news while the court is sitting.

The website, www.thisisexeter.co.uk, will be updated hourly throughout the trial, bringing the latest news from the courtroom.

By noon each day, there will be a news video on the website filmed from outside Exeter Crown Court.

And there will also be extensive coverage of the case in the Echo newspaper each day.

Editor Marc Astley said: "We're throwing quite a big team at it for us, with three reporters covering the trial. Two will be in court so that we can run with hourly updates or more on the web, with a third gathering material for the video bulletin.

"We'll be running five or six pages in the newspaper the day after the trial opening, and that will be fresh material in addition to what readers will have already seen on the web.

"There is massive interest in this case, it was one of the biggest stories we had last year.

"The trial has come at the right time for us from a multimedia point of view as our staff have been trained in all the disciplines we'll be using.

"People are starting to expect this sort of coverage from us – we publish overnight and while not all readers are pleased about that the other side of it is that they now expect us to publish on the web. "

When Marc and his team started out in digital media they agreed their mission was to deliver news to readers in whatever form they wanted to receive it.

He said: "We've been pushing it hard and they realize we are not just a newspaper but a website."