Maybe they've always been there, but it just took you a few years to notice them. By how often you hear this sentiment (X newspaper used to be better, more thoughtful and analytical), you'd expect news articles written a few decades ago to read like dissertations. Except they all read about the same, newsy and for a general audience. My theory is it takes a few years to notice the crap, but the crap was there all the time.

FT articles from 20 years ago are readily available online... You can see for yourself if there's been a change in writing quality.