How do you deal with local news in your game?

In The Sims 2 and 3 i used to make a word document and create tables with the real life date and "episode number" and another one with what happened in the game. I wrote my happenings in the style of a series daily summary starting in January and ending in December before Christmas so i could write a end of year cliff hanger.

Now the calendar in The Sims 4 has 28 days each season and sim years tend to go by very quickly now. I remember in the sims 3 we could choose what season to play in instead of each season rolling around like it does in the Sims 4.

I kinda can't be bothered to make any kind of news thing myself, but I agree with you, if the mailbox knows what's happening in everyone's lives, and the game knows things like Lottery and Accolades, there could be ingame ways to share/spread that news.

I think it would be awesome if "Gossip" could randomly spit out a nugget or two of such info. Or checking social media timeline. Or watching whatever relevant TV channel.

Tv, internet, paparazzi, socializing with other sims, finding themselves in death dungeons does kind of explain why their neighbor died... you know the usual ?

sometimes they just find the information in their heads which is kind of spooky indeed ?

On my last big save, I ended the rotation with my journalist sim. At some point in the week, she wrote a non-fiction book called “Week ##.” The summary of the book was the quick highlights of that rotation. I had her copy it and set it up to sell it (some retail mods in play so I wouldn’t have to restock it constantly). The next rotation, every family went to buy their copy to keep up with the latest info. I tried giving copies as a gift then having them gift money back, but that took way too long to do.

i also really miss the newspapers. we need them back. @mightysprite good suggestions. the "gossip" interaction could provide local gossip and the public access channel could be utilized for local news. like you said, the mailbox already knows via neighborhood stories. (edit: what i normally do is just utilize the neighborhood stories and townie social pop-ups to build local drama/lore and i frequently hop into manage households to tailor situations for my sim to "learn about".)

The game could easily have a Neighbourhood and World News section on the phone. I just use that notification panel for whatever the games announces as news, but that gets clogged up quickly with all other notifications and has to be deleted. I do miss the newspaper and magazines from TS2, hope they bring them back so we can play a fully off the grid world. Also, how come we can't mail stuff to other sims like Winterfest or birthday presents and such?

I love that Sims 3 newspaper. The dog always fetched it for my sim.

In my Sims 4 saves “the news” is background noise if anything. My sims would watch the news channel or more often, listen to talk radio to keep up with the latest announcements. Talk radio and the strangerville listening device (also news!?) play an important part in my apocalypse saves.
If the newspaper made its return I’d most definitely use it. Then again, I would take any traditional communication device over those annoying cell phones, at least for most of my saves.

The gossip interaction, as @mightysprite suggests, would be a great way to spread the news in historical saves.
While I’m here I might as well share with you my communication device wishlist:

• Smoke signals and signaling.
  
• Something Sim-milar to Morse Code / Telegraph transmitters.
  
• Two Way Radios / Walkie Talkies.
  
• Rotary phones.
  
• Newspaper kid, bards, heralds ( they should deliver the local as well as “international” news).
  
• Message Decoding / cryptology skill.
  

I like writing the stories of what happened in my game. That's where all of my creative energy goes. Sometimes, I add stuff to help the storyline, but just out of curiosity, until I totally turned off NS, I would have a look at the 'news' if you will, from the mailbox. That's how I learned I didn't have it completely turned off, when I had to restart my save. Sheesh. But, I have decided I'm going to take all of the chapters I wrote up for the save previous to this one and put them into a notebook, just for grins and giggles.

I like the idea of writing books based on local news. NS via the mail box could be good inspiration for lots of gameplay, as could fame/preference changes and advice given to kids/teens via PH advice prompts or career day attendees.

If a well know sim dies then an author could write a biography, a journalist could take a photo of the urn/tombstone/write an article, musicians might name a song after them or an artist might paint a portrait from a photo to be displayed at their funeral/grave/family home.

Sims becoming famous might commission head shot/fashion photo shoots or album/book covers from painters/digital artists etc. Sims might order saucy/single/family/home photographs or painted artwork for loved ones and family.

Sims being born/growing up might call for baby photoshoots/portraits, entertainers for baby showers/kids parties/sweet 16s etc

Sims dying might prompt a funeral event, a sudden change of family fortunes (both good and bad) or a fight over inheritance causing a family rift etc.

Sims adopting pets could result in friends deciding they want a pet too, or maybe getting a puppy/kitten from that household if any are born.

Sims gaining (or losing) a hobby through gameplay preference prompts could cause changes in Clubs/Club memberships as sims join to indulge a new hobby or leave for greener pastures.

I use the PH advice prompts and discipline styles to flesh out the type of parent my sims are. Some are more strict and care about raising Responsible adults, where as others might have different priorities such as raising an Empathetic child.

Sims moving house, changing jobs, changing hobbies, growing up, building families also provides new business for Interior Decorators, Stylists and Nail Technicians.

In a rotational game, there is a lot you can use these prompts for.

"Kathykins;c-18227939" wrote:
I feel like the only simmer who didn't care about the old newspaper. In 1+2 it went straight to the bin, or collected in the attic until the boy/girl couldn't deliver anymore. In 3, canceling the paper was one of the first thing I did when playing a new household.

The Sims 3 approach would really be the best of both worlds. I desperately want the newspaper back, but can understand why other people might not, so having it with the ability to cancel should be a reasonable compromise to meet everyone's needs.

For me, though, there are so many benefits to real newspapers:

(1) If you want a messy sim, they are a cheap and easy way to trash up the house. Love that free clutter! (In the truest sense of the word.)

(2) Now that we have recycling, they would be a great renewable source of material to recycle.

(3) As someone who loves crosswords puzzles IRL, I always loved to have my sims use the newspaper to build fun and/or logic skill (especially if they were broke/early in the game).

(4) I don't think we've ever actually seen this in past games, as far as I remember, but it would be cute to add an ability for the kids to make paper boats out of them, or for artistic sims to use them for origami/papier mache/etc. Maybe if we ever get a crafts/hobby pack, that would be an opportunity to bring back the papers and add this ability.

(5) I love @Simmerville's idea to have the paper incorporate actual news from the neighborhood. Didn't the original SimCity, way back in the day, have a feature where periodically an image of a newspaper front page would pop up with a few readable blurbs relevant to the changes you had made to the city? If EA could do that more than twenty years ago, surely it would be technically feasible to incorporate something like when you pick up a newspaper in your TS4 front yard.