I agree with your thinking about objective journalism. But also, this is a terrible article. Worse yet it's from a magazine that built it's reputation on tech savvy analysis of the digital age. That one can find similarities between the lack of objectivity of revolutionary war era journalism and today doesn't mean that history is repeating itself. There are more than two ways and this could, and imo is, something new. It's not like the money isn't there are that there isn't a large audience for objective news. It's that a large majority of those ad dollars are going to monopolies, google and facebook, that set prices as they choose and produce no content. They take the lion's share of the money doing nothing more than linking you to the content producers. One would expect Wired to offer an astute analysis of this issue.

And why is it that these right wing screeds always have to lie and insult?

It’s heartwarming to think the American public rallied to support abstract principles like the free press by subscribing to the Times. In reality, they forked over their hard-earned money because they wanted to see a highly unpopular president roasted endlessly, and they got what they wanted.

If the public subscribed to see the president endlessly roasted there are many free sites to do that. Free sites that are much more vicious and much less objective than the WP and the NYT. In fact it's the conservative never Trumper sites that are the most viciously anti-Trump. As I saw it there was a tremendous backlash against fake news after Hillary lost and a feeling that it helped Trump win. Many publications like the WP and the NYT made a heavy push to point out that if people want quality news they need to help pay for it. People responded by subscribing to the most objective and comprehensive news sites, the WP and the NYT. Yes they lean left but still of all the news, the most objective and comprehensive. There is a huge appetite for news and if it wasn't for google and facebook sucking up most of the ad dollars we could have an incredibly robust news media in the internet age.