Instantaneous communication is available via telegraph (with offices in every major, and many minor, cities as well as at railroad stations and spaceports). Generally telegrams are letters that can be sent instantly (like an email); there's not necessarily an obligation to respond immediately and there are frequent mishaps with downed wires or similar breaks in the wires between one place and another. Telegram operators are required to send messages and receive them, although Calculation Engines are also used to automate some parts of the processes. It's also possible for messages to be routed incorrectly or an error in transmission or reception to give wrong information (especially when numbers are involved). Signatures on legal documents cannot be sent via telegraph. Morse Code exists in 1899 and is used as a simple way to encode letters, numbers and special characters for transmission as telegraphs. Western Union is the largest telegraph company, but there are others (including Rebel Voice, the largest telegraph concern in the CSA, who reportedly refused to call themselves Confederate Union or Southern Union after breaking away from their parent company when the United States was divided in 1874).
Telegraph messengers are human (or Skaven or Lizardman) workers who take telegraph messages from a central office to the person who's suppose to receive it; they work for tips rather than a base salary from the telegraph company.
There are several magic items like scrying pools, crystal balls and other various things like that which can be used to communicate via voice, but they can't send items like paper with writing on it. The most recent magical advance for communication is the "facsimile mechanism", where a small single-purpose Calculation Engine is used to send information from one machine to another. The actual process involves the receiving machine magically creating ink on a piece of paper to replicate the document being sent.
Instant communication between planets is not possible in 1899; magic doesn't go far enough, even at the highest levels (Wish spells excepted, but using one of those to send a single message to another planet is wasteful and dangerous, and would only be used in cases of the direst emergencies). Out of necessity, political and military leaders posted off-planet are given free reign to make their own decisions about policy, tactics and strategy within the limits placed on them by their leadership. Exceeding one's limits in this area is exceptionally dangerous, but success when going beyond one's stated parameters is always useful if one is trying to avoid consequences.
Major cities have several dozen daily newspapers; some of them print a morning and evening edition (as well as occasional "Extra" editions when something sudden and newsworthy happens). Generally each publisher shapes the editorial policy of a given newspaper; with so many people depending on a newspaper as their main or sole source of information, there is plenty of room for papers with opposing viewpoints in the same city. Papers in German, Spanish, French, Hebrew, Skaven and Lizardman languages can all be found in big-city newsstands; there are newspapers run by various charities, ethnic societies, and religious groups as well as political parties. The Abilene Sentinel is one of the most highly regarded daily newspapers in the country; it's also one of the relatively few newspapers with a policy of hiring Skaven, Lizardmen, women, and nonwhites at all levels.
Widespread literacy and gas or electric lighting in the big cities mean that there's time available in the evenings after work for people to read for leisure. The paperback book does not exist at this point, but Dime Novels are short works of adventure (generally about the frontiers, whether in the Wild West or on other planets) that retail for ten cents. More expensive books tend to be priced out of the reach of working-class or poor people, but lending libraries exist where people pay a monthly fee to be allowed to borrow books from them. Amateur magical and scientific societies exist in big cities and small towns alike, where people with similar interests pool their limited funds to develop a private library and laboratory; some truly inspired magical and alchemical techniques have been discovered by groups like that (and the newspapers take a certain glee in covering the disasters that invariably ensue when people outpace their capabilities while trying to develop new alchemical formulations).
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