There was a great piece in the New York Times last summer about the history of its nameplate (or flag ... the masthead is inside and lists the publisher, editor in chief, delivery information, etc), and it shares a similar history to many of the nameplates that use similar type.

Like many American papers started in the mid-1850's, they modeled their nameplates after the already established nameplates of English papers (the Times modeled itself after the London Times).

Those nameplates in turn had been influenced by longstanding typographic histories that date back to the start of moveable type, which in turn reflect the standard blackletter script from before the invention of the printing press.

A monk named Alcuin had a great many manuscripts copied using Carolingian miniscule, but after the collapse of Charlemagne's empire, condensed, vertical versions became more en vogue in Northern Europe. This blackletter style (like the newspaper nameplates) was modified by Gutenberg and other early typesetters, and became standard, later copied by US papers.

tl;dr very old tradition

More can be found in A Type Primer by John Kane