This article aims to study the reactions of two French newspapers – Le Monde and Le Figaro – to the most recent reform of the French orthography which was published in 1990. The questions treated concern the visibility of this reform in the written press, its linguistic and discursive modalities, the principal actors of the discourse on the reform and the capacity of the newspapers to concentrate on a concrete reform fading out the idea of a reform in general. Methodologically, a chronological approach has been chosen in order to respect the temporal structure of the debate and to understand its evolution. Three representative periods have thus been selected during which a discussion of this reform has taken place in France, i.e. 1990, 2009 and 2016.