Media in a fantasy

[Cipiteca396]

Here's a video discussing literacy rates, though I can't say if it's 100% accurate as this is outside my area of expertise

Shad's always fairly accurate. If someone proved him wrong, he'd make a new video.
Which means the problem isn't literacy rates, it's just the production rates. It's fine for every household to have someone who can read, but it's still going to be difficult for newspapers to be a thing if you can't make them cheaply.

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As far as magical media, if we start from absolute scratch... What magic would be most useful for spreading news? In the oldest real world methods, we have things like signal fires, flags, riders, so on. Mostly military stuff, because communication is most important in warfare.

So do we have specialized fire mages who control flames in patterns that can only be understood by their counterparts? Illusionists that make fireworks? Riders with horses enchanted to run on the wind? Carrier pigeons, no no, I think you mean wild shaped couriers. BE the bird.

Then we have things that only magic can do. A wind mage whispers the news on a breeze, which then blows through town until everyone hears it. Perhaps a water mage scries a message board in the capitol once a day and transcribes the contents by controlling ink with their water magic. Two stones are enchanted to have an identical surface despite whatever distance separates them. Letters are enchanted to become animals and deliver themselves. A light mage makes the words forty feet tall and visible from space the rural towns outside the city.

Then we have the really weird stuff, like small monstrous animals that can be linked together and transmit sounds they hear to each other. Living telephone? Wtf, I need to go to sleep.

 

[Echimera]

Then we have the really weird stuff, like small monstrous animals that can be linked together and transmit sounds they hear to each other. Living telephone? Wtf, I need to go to sleep.

 

[ScramblinMan]

Honestly, just my two cents, I think whatever the hell you want can be a form of media in your fantasy world. You want plays were the actors generate breathtaking sfx using magic enhanced props, go for it. You want a flying machine, go for it. The barrier in regards to any technological and cultural advances in your story is how well you can explain them

To recall an anecdote, in a DnD game a group of players basically made a computer using the pieces of hundreds of skeletons and a pocket dimension. These pieces were tied by rope and magically enhanced to act like nodes that could send and receive signals (it was more complex and it involved computer lingo like OR gates, AND gates but I don't want to be too technical). Anyway the ropes were finetuned by an artificer to correspond to a button press which viola made a computer they could use to technical things beyond the abilities of a group of medieval adventurers.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, it may seem a bit silly to you to have a newspaper, but if you can explain it adequately then your audience should accept it too