WHEN broadsheet newspapers decided to carry news rather than advertising on their front pages many readers were outraged. The howls of protest were even louder when papers enlivened their dull, grey columns of small print with bolder headlines. And they were louder still when monochrome pictures arrived.

More recently, there were sad sighs at the advent of colour. Why, argued the critics, should serious papers published on behalf of people with a thirst for information, comment and analysis need photographs and graphics in colour? Tabloid readers might well enjoy, even require, such trivial window dressing, but the broadsheet buyer was an altogether more discerning type.

I know the argument well because I was one of those who advanced it. So what? The newspaper rainbow revolution rolled over all of us who tried to hold back, progress. It may be disappointing, it may even be that we were right, but the readers ignored us. Not only did they continue to buy those papers; other people joined them. While the British based tabloids are struggling, broadsheets are undergoing a renaissance in circulation.

But the latest, and undoubtedly hottest, global debate about the serious press (and public service television) centres on the next stage of the popularisation the choice and presentation of editorial content. Have news agendas changed? Are broadsheets sacrificing their role as serious minded, sober papers of record to attract more and more readers?

To use the ugly American phrase of the moment, are they "dumbing down"? In other words, as Vincent Browne suggested in his column yesterday, are we witnessing the "tabloidisation" of the media?

MR Browne was upset by the amount of coverage in The Irish Times and on RTE of the Michelle Rocca/Cathal Ryan court case. It was done, he claimed, merely for "prurient titillation". Quite properly, he destroyed lame attempts to justify it in terms of public policy. But he was on weaker ground when he dismissed the much more straightforward and honest reason for publication: the paper was, in my view, giving its readers what they want.

He adopts the high tone of the chattering class elite by pronouncing that it is not the "function of newspapers like The Irish Times and the Irish Independent" to let the public read what they desire. Tacitly, he is suggesting that the loathsome appetite of the common people, if it must exist at all, should be satisfied by tacky tabloids.

His message: one press for us, one press for them. And his politics is therefore fundamentally anti democratic, based on false notions of a split between a relatively small, educated, literate, articulate upper class and the great mass of an uneducated working class.

His view is also old fashioned. It implies that l'homme serieux cannot also be l'homme leger. And the same goes, of course, for les femmes. Why should people who take a keen interest in the movement of interest rates and bickering in the Dail not also wonder at the extraordinary private lives enjoyed by the rich and famous?

I am not arguing for intrusion into those people's lives, but if they present their lives in public (as in the Rocca Ryan hearings) then why not indulge that prurient side of our nature?

What use would it be for The Irish Times to ignore the story? It might well watch its audience transfer their affections to other papers which did cover it. The paper would then be accused of failing to provide a comprehensive service to all its readers.

Mr Browne argues that it is not the job of a paper to play to the gallery. Papers should not give people what they want (nor should they indoctrinate people into thinking they want it). He might further argue, though he did not, that the readers might not want it anyway. They have no choice: they have to read what the editor gives them.

The answer to the first objection is simple: if a reader, like Mr Browne doesn't want to read it, he or she can turn over. The answer to the second is more complex, because it involves the special relationship between editor and reader. Editors get a feeling that a switch of direction is right.

They might take advice from their senior executives but, in the end, they operate on instinct. Even a sackful of letters might not convince them otherwise. The yelp of disapproval prompted by any change, such as the use of colour pictures, usually evaporates within weeks.

Editors can't afford to lose a paper's authority and credibility. But balance between the serious and the entertaining must be policed every day. It is a much more difficult task than sticking to a dry formula, but there can be dividends too. Increasing the readership for a serious paper is surely a phenomenon to applaud.

THIS transformation has already, taken place in Britain. Both the Times and the Daily Telegraph have adopted a populist agenda, but that doesn't mean they have renounced all claim to high mindedness. Their leader "pages remain centres of excellence. The Guardian is more subtle, eschewing the glossier style of its main rivals, but it also manages to mix public interest and human interest without causing its readers to desert.

There is clear proof that to ignore this journalistic trend is to lose one's audience. Look at the state of the Independent, the single British broadsheet which has tried to avoid the populist agenda. Its sales, now barely 250,000, have been falling for ages. This was the paper which was founded on the platform of seriousness, refusing, for, instance, to cover stories about the royal family. Yet it found itself in the position of having failed to inform its readership about the reason for the crisis of confidence in the monarchy.

Its founders, who spotted the way the Times and the Telegraph were moving, wanted to stop what they saw as the rot. They failed to note that times were changing. So were people. And now so have newspapers. It is no longer tenable to delineate people as highbrow or lowbrow, upmarket or down market, serious or light weight. Broadsheets now have to treat readers as if they are all these things at once.

Let me also take Mr Browne to task for his pejorative use of the word, "tabloidisation". That overlooks the history of tabloids. These papers set out to inform and entertain, to encourage working class people to read about the world in language they could understand. Britain's Daily Mirror of the 1950s and 1960s was tabloid in size, tabloid in its energy, partisan in its politics, but full of information. Readers were being educated whether or not they knew it.

The fact that the tabloids were gradually transformed into vehicles of entertainment was due, primarily, to changes of ownership and pressures of commerce. But there is no suggestion that broadsheets will inevitably follow this road.

There are dangers. It might prove tempting to sacrifice editorial quality in the pursuit of sales quantity. But let us rejoice. The days of elitism are passing.