I was sitting around listening to Welcome to Night Vale (An awesome podcast if you are unaware, though somehow i imagine there is some demographic crossover between these two pieces of media.) and thinking about CE in general when I had a thought. That thought was that a community radio station would most likely be a non-starter, radio waves not really meshing with steam punk colonialism. But that led to a second more fun thought, Has any thought been given to printing presses? They seem a perfect fit as far a complicated machines that are also really complex, that and it makes a colony newspaper filled with wonderful articles about hats, work an the Glory Of The Empire. With what is surely a miniscule chance of including eldritch secrets, dissident propaganda, advertising for "social groups" or anything else untoward. I would like to imagine it would be a double edged sword, where if the colony is running smoothly the paper touts the overseers competence and the Empires endless kindness, but when things get out of hand (something I am sure no overseer would ever allow to happen) the paper begins talking about those things, sharing the stories, memories. and truths that drove nice Mr.Blacks the miller to become a cannibalistic serial killer. Anyways just wanted to share that, just in case the unlikely case that more clever people then me hadn't gotten to it first. EDIT: A forum search that i really should have done first reveals that newspapers have been given thought by someone, though only in the context of a colony history recap. Or at least that was the extent of the suggestion, the response was deliciously vauge leading me to think the clever people putting this all together are fiddling with these thoughts already. So perhaps the focus here should be what we think a printing press should accomplish, and the things no printing press should do but will anyways becasue !FUN!
Some sort of news in the colony's has been discussed before, though I really don't know what aspects are going to be included. I can easily see a building that has Printing Presses both newfangled and mundane allowing Colonists to express their "freedom" of speech. We know there will be a system tracking the relationships of the various factions, and it may just turn out that a good way to poll the attitudes of your colonists would be to let them write for their local paper. This both A, gives the colonists a way to represent themselves and gives a few more avenues to "figure them out". A cultist for instance may decide to just write an article about the joys of holding your head underwater until you lose consciousness. (My colonists all drowned themselves, what a terrible bug! "Oh that's no bug, it's a feature!")
