In the tumultuous decade that followed the 2011 Uprising, hundreds of Syrians became interested in creating their own newspaper. By 2021, the country that once counted only a dozen regime–affiliated newspapers had produced no fewer than three hundred local periodicals. Why did Syrians go to such great lengths to print newspapers and magazines despite the existence of online news and the material difficulties of printing periodicals in wartime? This paper addresses this empirical puzzle by delving into a unique archive of 304 print magazines and newspapers published between 2011 and 2021, and by analyzing 30 semi-structured interviews with the Syrian activists who wrote and produced them. It argues that producing a newspaper over other forms of media had a particular symbolic significance under authoritarianism: newspapers, as symbolic objects, assisted in subjectivation (Warnier 2004), the process by which individuals became revolutionaries. The newspaper was the material object around which were centered revolutionary practices, such as writing, printing, distributing or hiding a newspaper. It was thus part of the numerous symbolic means of mobilization which marked the Arab Uprisings, such as the use of videos (Boëx and Devictor 2021, Wessels 2017), performance (Ismael 2011), literature and artistic practices (Cooke 2017, Wedeen 2019). From this vantage point, newspapers are turned into objects of empirical inquiry for analyzing trajectories of mobilization, step by step from the creation of the paper to its diffusion and demise. Although many studies have examined the role of social media in the Arab Uprisings, research on print media represents a significant literature gap. By shifting the focus of analysis in the study of symbolic resistance from digital and visual media toward print culture, this article makes visible the role of materiality in helping to forge social movements. The method adopted follows the trajectory of a social movement through the ‘cultural biography’ (Kopytoff 1986, see also Appadurai 1988) of the newspaper as a material object, acknowledging its agency as a non-human (Latour 2007). The newspaper’s life gives us a trail into the trajectory of the Syrian civil opposition, from the initial hopeful and non-violent protests, to the professionalization of opposition institutions in rebel-held areas through the creation of editorial teams, to the repression and scattering of opposition activists in the region and beyond. This material-biographical approach allows for understanding fundamental questions of collective action, especially motivation, social movement organization, and the sustainability of mobilization over time.