Majmu' Fawayid (1851-1856) received praise as the first Arabic newspaper in Beirut. A project of the American missionaries, Tarrazi records in History of the Arab Press that it addressed "geographic, historical, scientific, and religious matters, and other useful topics." Aside from this oft-cited description for the annual periodical, the role of this publication in the development of the Arabic newspaper industry of the Levant and in the emergence of lughat al-jara'id (newspaper language) has yet to be studied. Looking at its physical and discursive aspects, this paper first questions how text was assigned and space quartered within the periodical, and what role the anonymity of its authors played in producing information. Next, the linguistic features of the periodical are subjected to scrutiny to reveal what lexical and syntactic conventions, in addition to translation practices, were adopted to create and disseminate knowledge, and why. Lastly, this study will discuss the organizing principle for the annual publication—“useful knowledge”—and examine how these fawayid were constituted and selected for presentation to the mid-nineteenth-century reading audience. In focusing on this missionary foray into journalism, this paper offers a new understanding for this collection of miscellany. Studying the material composition of Majmu' Fawayid and the language style employed within its textual borders sheds light on the production of knowledge and the relationship of knowledge to language valuation, during the early years of the Arab Nahda in Beirut, a period characterized as a literary, social, and cultural renaissance.