This paper argues that the first generation of Arabic-language newspapers, in the late 1850s and early 1860s, were focused on providing their readers with a perspective that was equally local and equally global from its inception; the local could mean imperial, urban, or provincial and in contrast, the global extended far beyond the local, spanning Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia. This first generation is best represented by three papers in particular: Hadiqat al-Akhbar (Beirut), al-Jawaib (Istanbul), and Al-Ra’id al-Tunisi (Tunis). This paper will begin by looking at questions of form or how content was framed within these early newspapers themselves: newspapers organized material in a way that emphasized the dual importance of the local and the global. The paper will then focus on the issue of power, which when framed through this local-global perspective, reveals a nuanced understanding of shifts in power dynamics in the colonial age. Next, the theme of utility will be examined. Most newspapers emphasized repeatedly in a multitude of ways that their purpose was to provide information that was useful for the general public in the service of the nation. This ties back into the idea of the local: the nation was ultimately not a reference to the nation state but rather how newspapers saw their own locales. In addition, this paper makes two implicit arguments. The first is that the history of the Arabic-language press should eschew the traditional focus on Egypt (and specifically Cairo) and should look elsewhere, both regionally and globally; the first Arabic newspapers came from Beirut, Tunis, and Istanbul, setting the standard for an industry that would span five continents. The second is that an intellectual history of the Arabic press is necessary to understanding the press as a social, cultural, political, and economic institution; to that end, it uses an intellectual history methodology blending textualism, contextualism, and conceptual history in the vein of the Cambridge School and Reinhardt Koselleck.