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Looking back from the vantage point of 2026, the decade of the ’90s was print media’s last gasp. It was the last time investors and would-be moguls would pledge their time and money with the promise of a payoff down the road. It was the last time print would exercise something like a monopoly over the dissemination of information. It was the last time readers would instinctively turn to paper to navigate the world and learn what was happening beyond their immediate surroundings. By the end of that decade, the web would begin to exert its inexorable influence, eroding the readership and advertising revenue on which print depended for survival.

For the foreigners and expats who descended on Prague in droves during that decade, the English-language print landscape was unusually dense and vibrant. Publications of all stripes—often staffed by writers with little professional experience or even much knowledge of the country—popped up seemingly overnight, serving a growing readership that depended on these outlets as a lifeline to the outside world.

Beginning this week, in a series of three blog posts, I will survey that broad landscape of expat media—from earnest newspapers to literary journals to often short-lived, tongue-in-cheek ’zines. My goal with this is to rescue their memory and give them a home here in future web or AI searches. In this first post, I focus specifically on newspapers, including an epic battle at the time between two titans. Next week, in Part 2, I will share tales from the rough-and-tumble business and economic press. Finally, in Part 3, I'll dive into the colorful universe of literary magazines, journals, and ’zines. In conducting my research, I’m indebted to the Facebook group Prague Expats in the ’90s and the readers there who contributed comments and photos.*