The book features the coming of movable type to Ankh-Morpork, and the founding of the Discworld's first newspaper by William de Worde, as he invents investigative journalism with the help of his reporter Sacharissa Cripslock.

William de Worde, black sheep of an influential Ankh-Morpork family, scrapes out a living as a scribe producing stock letters-to-home and a gossipy newsletter for foreign notables.

The Guild of Engravers aim to halt the 'non-guild' activities of the Times by cutting off their paper supplies and establishing The Ankh-Morpork Inquirer, a loss-making tabloid filled with fabricated stories.

They extort from their employers' zombie lawyer Mr. Slant their promised payment and a big "bonus" in jewels, using compromising voice recordings captured with a dis-organiser Mk II.

Pin, driven insane due to the dark-light visions of the New Firm's deceased victims, kills Tulip to steal his potato (which he believed would allow him to reincarnate after death) and uses him as a raft against molten lead.

From the recordings on the dis-organiser, William discovers that his father Lord de Worde, an ardent speciesist opposed to Vetinari's tolerance of non-human residents in the city, is the mastermind behind the Committee.

William manages to blackmail Slant into providing his services pro bono to get him released from Watch custody and to resolve his dispute with the Engravers' Guild.

[4] MIT Technology Review observed that it "combines humor and political satire to great effect" and compared it to the work of Oscar Wilde, but felt that it relied too strongly on coincidence, that there was insufficient closure to some of the plot threads, and that "some of the dialogue tries too hard to be witty", ultimately concluding that although it may be "quite unfair to set [Pratchett] to higher standards than other [authors]", the quality of work he produced would naturally lead readers to have heightened expectations.