Objective journalism is a relatively new invention in the history of news. The earliest newspapers were printed versions of an already existing system of handwritten newsletter services. These services were usually carried out by merchants, who, as part of their business, maintained substantial international correspondance networks. During the 14th and 15th century many merchants saw the lucrative prospect in offering handwritten newsletters containing the most important news to wealthy customers. The first newspaper, the German Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedencwürdigen Historien, published in Strasbourg in 1605, was simply a printed version of these kind of newsletters.

As the source implies they consisted of letters from business relations and was thus mostly written in a personal and subjective form, and generally retained all the formalities of letters. Even during the 18th century when journalism became proffesionalised, many of them saw the need to write their news pieces in the form of fictionalised letters, this was simply because the readers trusted the information more if it was in the form of a relation of a person that had experienced the event at first hand. There are examples from the early period of the handwritten newsletters that people would not even trust news if it was written down, they would rather trust it if it was told to them in person. So this kind of subjective style was a necessity of early newspapers.

News items would thus often be written in first person, and events that occurred in foreign places would read somewhat like this: "We have had a severe drought in these parts, but with the Grace of God hopefully the weather will turn and the harvest will not have been completely lost" etc etc.

It is only with the 19th century, when newspapers had become an ingrained part of Western society, and when trust in the written word had become much more accepted, plus the belief in an objective and scientific positivism became widespread, the belief that something could be reported in a completely neutral and objective fashion, that the more objective and sober form of newswriting gradually became the ideal.

This coincided with the fact that journalism itself at this point was beginning to become an academic discipline where theories and practice of how to achieve this objectivism was the main object of study. Although this process was not fully realised until the 20th century, when academically trained journalists gradually became the majority instead of the self taught professionals of the earlier times.

Further reading: Andrew Pettegree, The Invention of News, Yale University Press, 2014.