No, before the modern advertising industry it was very cheap to start a newspaper so they were mostly owned by small businesses. The advertising model made it more expensive to run a newspaper which is why the news industry got taken over by wealthy families and then later corporations.
Wow, that is very surprising. Any links to read about this?
Manufacturing Consent (the book), specifically the section in the beginning about the ownership filter.
If you do "Look inside this book" and then "excerpt," it explains it in the first few pages of the book.