After taking FT for ~15 years now, and the point about the difficulties in producing a monthly print magazine in the era of instant, constant media is not to be underestimated, it seems like I've 'always' gone through periods where I thought the mag was definitely on its way downhill, followed by times when I think it's firing on all cylinders, then back again. Honestly, without going through all my back issues, I've no idea whether to chalk that up to wherever I was in my life at the time versus the *objective* [!] quality of the issue(s).
That said, I'm rather liking this month's effort so far---Shakespeare authorship was quite interesting, Texas blue dogs was an entertaining read and provided some good research, the William Corliss obit was most excellent. I think it's always going to have a hit-and-miss quality----such is the nature of the beast. But I do know that if it went away completely, heaven forbid, I'd really miss it.