Despite the raging civil war, the 72 days of the Commune were a period of intense popular politicisation and a flowering of the press. Newspapers were sold by auction, the "petit journal" at a penny (5 centimes) or the "grand journal" (at least two centimes). They were bought, read and listened to collectively in cabarets, courtyards and on doorsteps. The headlines resounded, thrown out by hawkers, and the articles were taken up and commented on in clubs and workshops.

During the Commune, 71 newspaper titles appeared, an average of one a day. In all, around a hundred titles were distributed, representing almost 1,500 issues, sometimes with thousands of copies. Some newspapers were short-lived, and some were reduced to a single issue. Others lasted for all or almost all of the Communard period. Compared to the social reality of Paris (1.8 million inhabitants, 440,000 workers, 485,000 people on the electoral roll, 230,000 voters for the revolutionary parties), the press circulation figures are exceptional. The three most widely circulated titles (le Cri du Peuple by Jules Vallès, le Mot d'ordre by Henri Rochefort, le Père Duchêne by Alphonse Humbert, Eugène Vermersch and Maxime Vuillaume) alone had a print run of over 150,000 copies.

The diversity of the Communard press reflected that of the Commune as a whole. All shades of opinion were represented, including those that openly opposed the Commune (although some newspapers that supported Versailles were banned in May, during the Versailles offensive against Paris). Supporters of Blanqui read Le Réveil (Charles Delescluze) and Le Vengeur (Félix Pyat); Proudhonians read La Commune (Georges Duchêne), "internationalists" read La Révolution politique et sociale and Le Cri du peuple, and other socialists turned to La Sociale by Auguste Vermorel and Léocadie Béra, known as André Léo, or Le Tribun du peuple by Prosper-Louis Lissagaray.

In the aftermath of the Commune, almost all the press sided with the victors. Only a few provincial newspapers did not join in the slaughter, such as Jules Guesde's Droits de l'Homme in Montpellier, L'Émancipation in Toulouse and Le National in Loiret. On the contrary, a number of newspapers that spoke out against the rigours of the repression were prosecuted, though fortunately not always successfully.