You may want to research a printing press before trying that.

But actually, sure... we were told, we will be able to create books. You can make books and send them around. It will just consume too much time to be worth it without the printing press.

So until thats researched, the gossip system will spread words.

Perhaps until the printing press is invented, as Gromschlog noted, a more reliable news network would actually be an organized group of funded bards.

Consider that they will likely have quite high Social stats and will, classically, be wandering from settlement to settlement. A highly skilled bard would have access to nearly every social echelon of the community, from lively taverns to performances for nobility. An aspiring businessman could pay the bard to, for lack of a better word, advertise their business, spreading the good word throughout various settlements. They could also operate as intelligence agents, either freely or under contract with certain organizations, governments, people, etc.

If you want to know the local gossip, perhaps the only person with greater knowledge than the innkeeper is the bard.

To be honest, even you have the printing press invented. Most players will be communicating by discord or the forum here. So the press is more likely only for NPC, or when you want to use NPC to spread the words.

I'm not sure how fast and smart the NPC to actually spread the words to others since AI system is not really out yet. Moreover, every tribes have their own language; therefore, I think it will be quite hard to start a newspaper business in the game unless there are a lot of NPC in your area

It's the kind of thing that sounds like a really great idea, until you're three weeks into doing it and it's such a drag and no one's reading it anyway.

Well without a printing press you'll have to craft the flyer one by one. Of course. I haven't heard them talk about a post board for jobs and other things. I hope that's on the itinerary for the final game. I hope every town hall and inn/tavern has these.

There is so many kingdoms creating the "Media" within the kingdom, and they get privileges. The discussion between kings/queens. Also seem to honor the presence of press. However, who knows how long that will last. Farther, how exclusive it will remain. Lots of protected travel. To accomplish the high goal of seeing the propaganda first hand will be entertaining to some.

Hopefully though more people will rather do Investigative journalism rather than doing the hawgwash that is getting the message from the kingdom themselves. That's only valuable to control a society.

Any kind of 'newspaper' or flyer, will require someone with the ability to copy. Duplication is meant to be possible under the skill tree after all, but large scale is a bit of a logistics issue for spreading and resource cost.

I'm sure there's going to be people willing to work on the skills to support it, but I don't personally expect newspaper/flyers to circulate past a 1-2 town radius.

Any new laws etc will more likely be passed on via having notices placed on a board in town rather than wasting resources by giving the flyers to individuals, or similar.

I'm not sure if it would be what we think of today as a newspaper that is published daily or weekly, but perhaps something like an academic journal that is published monthly or quarterly.

That could be very important for towns with steep shortages, major changes in governance, or public health situations (I heard there's a plague that could be spreading). It could also be used for counterintelligence to spread false or misleading news to opposition kingdoms/duchies/counties (spread rumors of crime to make a town seem unsafe).

As others have mentioned, it would be too work intensive for a regular publication but very important in certain situations.

Would be cool if such a thing happened. But you know most hardcore groups, will just try force their communities onto discord to share anything.

Such a news sharing system, whether by a newspaper or a network of bards, would certainly be interesting and useful. There will always be people who don't use Discord, and even those of us that do won't know everything that's going on in other dutchies or counties. So having a system in place that lets you spread information like "the town of X was burned to the ground" or "bandits have been seen gathering near the village of Y" would be cool.

I think this will be needed in game. Especially, since npcs we need to know what going on in game. For example. if there is a thief in your town that was caught stealing but not captured, you could get in a discord and tell the next town to watch out but none of npcs of that town would know who to look at for or there is even a thief own their way.. Also, none of the game mechanics would work in game when it comes to someone being guilty. If your character doesn't know someone is a criminal and you action them, you're the criminal now and others could openly attack you if they are unaware of the situation.