It rather depends on what you mean by journalism. I suspect your definition is true to the Guardian's apparent aims, publishing well researched truths to an interested population. What was being published in the 1800s was most certainly not that; instead, being very similar to the current forms of "opinion journalism" that are exceptionally lucrative today.
Boris Johnson was paid more by the Telegraph (£220k) to write one column a week than he was as Foreign Secretary at the same time. Propaganda is lucrative.
It rather depends on what you mean by journalism. I suspect your definition is true to the Guardian's apparent aims, publishing well researched truths to an interested population. What was being published in the 1800s was most certainly not that; instead, being very similar to the current forms of "opinion journalism" that are exceptionally lucrative today.