What an odd view of history to imagine that newspapers weren't always (and importantly) open about their editor's opinions.
The idea of "objective journalism" is both ahistorical and unsound and mostly just acts as cover for claiming that certain journalism has subjectivity we're not allowed to call out.
It's far better to know how the editors see the world than to falsely pretend that they don't.
What a sad state of affairs when people who consider themselves educated enough to opine about what newspapers should and should not do clearly has no historical understanding or basic familiarity with newspapers.
Every choice of coverage is an opinion about what is important, and shapes the tone of coverage as surely as an editorial. This is actually a very common critique of the News Media, which loves to aggrandize itself by saying that it is neutral.
At least editorials are honest about the views of the institution.
Facts still must be interpreted. It could be a fact that a credible source claimed X and a non-credible source claimed the opposite. A newspaper's job is to also provide this context, not merely the "facts" of what was stated.
Similarly, an endorsement could in countless ways not simply be partisan. For example, based on what is most predicted to help the country with X/Y/Z.
If this was a long-standing policy, or one at least announced well in advance of the election it wouldn't get much attention. That it's coming right before the election for transparently selfish reasons on the part of the paper's owner is not great.
For the past 100 years, literally since WWI, all media organizations have been used to constantly launder opinions into the brains of the American people, disguised as 'fact'.
