When considering the role of the media in the Arab Spring most accounts focus on new media, such as the Internet and satellite television stations. In the Egyptian case, I argue, the print media had an important role to play in the years leading up to the January 25th Revolution. From the mid-2000s, when they rose to prominence, privately-owned newspapers increased the available political information. These outlets contributed to public discourse, in particular, with reports on instances of corruption and protest events. Thus, these outlets made clear to Egyptians that many of their fellow citizens were similarly frustrated and even angry with the government. My paper advocates for the continued importance of print media to politics in Egypt by exploring this story in three parts. First, it presents the legal and institutional changes that enabled the expansion of privately-owned print media in Egypt. Then it explores the political context in which these papers emerged, and the contentious opposition voices with which they engaged. Finally, the paper presents quantitative content analysis and illustrates how (and how much) privately-owned newspapers covered corruption and protests in comparison to their state-owned counterparts. This paper will use the Egyptian case to add nuance to a number of themes in social science and communications studies. This project speaks to two trends in media in non-democracies with which scholars are currently grappling. Today, many autocracies allow privately-owned print media, where state-owned papers previously dominated the market. Experts also observe that autocracies show more variation in levels of press freedom than do democracies. The case of Egypt from the mid-1990s to today allows for an exploration of the relationship between these trends. Additionally, this paper juxtaposes works on ‘authoritarian resilience,’ many of which come from studies of Egypt and other Arab states, with works on the role of the media in the framing necessary for contentious politics.