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The Russian influenza epidemic of 1889-1890 has been the subject of very limited historiographical interest compared to the later Spanish influenza. Yet it provides a unique opportunity to observe the critical role played by the press during an international health crisis. From a corpus of four French newspapers ( Le Matin; Le Temps; Le Petit Journal; La Presse), we illustrate the role of the press as an actor in the mobilization against the epidemic in Paris, playing a crucial role at the interface between people and political and health authorities. In the context of an unprecedented information network and in the midst of internal competition between newspapers, the work of the French press was at the heart of all the different phases. By confronting available medical knowledge and its field or cable reports, by investigating local stories involving a population that was also its readership, by denouncing political action or supporting it, the different papers were actively involved in the advent of this public event and its politicization in the capital city. It was only later that the statistics brought up the scale of mortality caused by the epidemic nationwide.