The Egyptian media displayed a high level of diversity in content in the final years of the Mubarak regime before the 2011 uprising. This diversity extended considerably after the uprising when national media – including the strictly controlled state media – embodied expressions of dissent with unprecedented openness, in defiance of the entrenched identity of the journalist as the regime’s guard. This identity resurfaced after the military coup of July 2013, when the national media resumed its role as the favourite platform for excluding dissent in the name of the regime’s stability. This paper looks at the short-lived ‘revolts’ within Egyptian traditional newsrooms searching for new identities, investigating the challenges, hopes and trade-offs of a painful process of change. The paper argues that while the journalistic agency gained unprecedented dynamism and helped supporting trends toward democratization in media and politics in the immediate aftermath of the uprising, it also acted as powerful platform in “othering” opponents preparing the ground for the return of autocratic practices and ultimately the fall of the democratic experiment. The paper explores the agentic dynamics in the journalistic practice in an uncertain times within a highly context transition to democracy. It is rooted in ethnographic research with journalists and media stakeholders in Egypt from the 2011 uprisings until the phase immediately following the military takeover.