Nigerian newspapers as elsewhere are many times established as part of the apparatus for the extension of personal or group interest, to mobilise and contest meaning in the overall project of constructing hegemony in an ethnically fractious polity. In this paper, I trace the emergence of Alaroye, today the best known Yoruba-language newspaper, by identifying its survival strategies and stabilisation against the changing circumstances of a socially and politically hostile environment. The paper aims to demonstrate that beyond the economic motive, Alaroye has in response to both political and social conditions been able to negotiate its own existence within the contested space that is Nigeria. In doing this, it adopted and adapted several strategies of survival and innovations that have enabled it to maintain its unique position in the local language newspaper industry in particular and the wider context of Nigerian newspaper culture in general. Approached from the analytical framework of New Historicism, with additional insights from Karin Barber’s extensive work in Yoruba studies, this paper discusses the genres of Alaroye, the paper’s genre-blurring innovations, its oral-written style, audience and address, against the background of its initial failure at the newsstand and the specific factors responsible for its take-off and stabilisation after three failed attempts.