I never understood the concept of newspapers endorsing a candidate.

Don't newspapers have to at-least pretend to be neutral in a democracy i.e. on the side of people. Is there some dynamic here due to America being effectively a two party democracy that I'm missing.

I feel like endorsing one candidate over the other is a public declaration/acknowledgement that their future reporting on failures of their endorsed candidate will be soft and reporting on the other party will be aggressive.

Someone who regularly follows news on both sides may be able to tell whether this has been true so far or not.