Out of curiosity, if you don't mind sharing, roughly how old are you? Or rather when do you mean "old days"? I'm in my early 30's and my earliest memories of the news were Bush Sr. breaking his no tax pledge, which was covered negatively, even though it was sensible, and the shit mess in Iraq.
I used to read print edition newspapers everyday till 2008/10.
Let me clarify what I mean by negativity. Newspapers were (are?) about popular opinion. So, when the markets were doing great, you get all caps, huge typeset about the new highs markets were making. Anyone who questioned that was relegated to inside pages.
Same was true when market tanked. All caps, huge typeset words about "blood in the street" or "Black x day". Anyone who disagreed and said - time to buy stocks was relegated to inside pages.
They were about reflecting or shaping popular opinion. Same was true for Bush Sr and his tax pledge.
Nowadays, I can link to a some blog which says this is a high and market will crash soon. In which case, the metric of waiting for "to the moon" article might no longer hold true.
