When was cursive writing used in newspapers? Was it the 1800s?

Cursive writing was never used in newspapers as we know them. Before the invention of the printing press, information was preserved in cursive writing in manuscripts, and copies, hand-written, were disseminated in very limited quantities. Some type faces today may imitate cursive writing, and with modern scanning technology it's easy to "take pictures" of cursive writing and disseminating it in any form we want (newspapers, books, pamphlets, web pages, etc.). Newspapers are printed in bulk, and cursive writing is one at a time and cannot be done in bulk unless one had a whole lot of people copying by hand, and even then each document would be unique, not a reproduction of the original.