Since the most pervasive ethic of American journalism is that of objective news reporting (the apparently impartial reporting of verifiable data from a detached point of view), a study examined how and to what extent general news reports differed over time in terms of objective reporting. The news content in six representative daily newspapers for three 10-year periods (1865-1874, 1905-1914, and 1925-1934) was analyzed according to the following criteria for objective news reporting: it contains only verifiable assertions, does not make claims to significance, and avoids statements of prediction, value, advocacy, or inductive generalizations without clear attribution to source. For the analysis 360 news reports--120 from each time period--were coded from 90 weekday issues of the newspapers. Findings indicated that objective news reports increased progressively from the earliest period to the later period for each of the newspapers. Wire news had no statistical effect on whether the news reporting was objective or nonobjective in any of the three time periods. Use of authoritative news sources and the inverted pyramid format ascended with the objective story, though the inverted pyramid appears to have made a faster ascent. The data also indicate that New York journalism was no less objective than that of other areas. While a study of these time periods provided revealing data, further study is needed to investigate the progression of these aspects of the news report between 1874 and 1905. Five data tables and a four-page list of references conclude the document. (SRT)