A quarter of a century passing by knocks away some of that gloss, of course. Today’s El Pais has barely changed, and maybe needs to. The rest of the Madrid pack – El Mundo, ABC et al – have settled for overwhelming similarity, so that Spanish news-stands too often seem a little drab. José One- Note. But the idea itself, the idea of a quality tabloid, is alive and well and winning converts by the week.

Pick up a typical copy of El Pais and turn its pages. There are 80 or more of them, not too walloping, not too small. Eleven items on the front, only one – the lead – told in full. The rest are briefs and write-offs. (But still, in number and variety out-gunning your average British broadsheet: sometimes only three or four items top weight). It’s inside the book, though, that the advantages start to emerge. Quality? Let’s start with a double-page spread on Iraq, then six more pages of international news and commentary. Then a whole page of leaders and two more of text-heavy opinion pieces. This message brooks no argument. Whoever thought going tabloid must mean dumbing down?

So we run on through home news and a section called “Sociedad”, which can devote a whole page to topics such as air pollution, with graphs and charts, before you reach the 16 pages of pull-out regional news and features in the centre. Arts, Finance, Obits and Sport flow naturally, with a lighter, more gossipy feel at the back. The further you go, the more relaxed you feel. And the interesting thing – the crucial advantage – is how crisp and clear it all seems.

When I edited a broadsheet we occasionally commissioned page traffic surveys where readers – in their ornery cussedness – told us how they used the paper. They grazed as they wished rather than followed our expert instructions, they found a small story tucked at the bottom and ignored the supposed page lead. But maybe they were just taking a subliminal hint from the size of the page itself, from a big space compiled from bits and pieces rather than positively selected and projected. With tabloids, editors have to choose what they want every page to say to the reader. No messy hampers across the top and another half-hearted lead tucked near the fold. No pages divided into three or four special interest pieces (because modern broadsheets survive on their special interests). A tabloid page is enough space to explain the horrors of air pollution; a full broadsheet page would be too much.

It’s the natural way

What took us so long, then? Why was it the autumn of 2003 before The Independent broke the British mould? The obvious answer is fear of looking dumb. Say “red top” with a curl of the lip. Pretend that only scholars and gentlemen belong on broadsheets. Less obvious answers include the extreme conservatism of advertising agencies – why make their precious ads in different sizes? – and the similarly extreme conservatism, going on inefficiency, of Britain’s arcane newspaper distribution system. But in reality, none of these were the real drag anchor on change. Ingenuity, like The Independent’s “experimental” months of dual publication, could quickly kill the dumbing down debate. Cash clout like that of Rupert Murdoch could soon get the retailers clearing their counters and giving both versions of The Times a decent display. No, the fault was not out there somewhere, dashing our dreams. The fault was with us, sitting in our editorial bunkers, and with our slack grip of the market opportunities that technical change had brought in train.

What happened through the late 1980s as Fleet Street, post-Wapping, heaved itself gingerly into the world of new technology? Actually the precise reverse of what logic would counsel. Computer-setting and the rest freed journalism from the clanking curse of heavy metal. It put speed at a premium. It made adding extra sections and pages easy. But something contrary developed beneath this millstream of change. The computers kept breaking down. Swollen pagination imposed nightmare print schedules. So flexibility died the death. Regional editionising of news became vestigial outside the football pages. (New papers like the Indy thought one man in the North was enough). Theatre reviewing on the night became ancient history. Effort and attention, instead, were poured into making a core edition good enough to last the night without looking too dated – and when, gradually, the machinery didn’t break down so often, when print runs began to cope, we settled in exhaustion or sloth for what we’d got. We’d slipped into being a producer-led industry, forgetting the stark fact that consumers also have rights.

Stack the other huge changes in the newspaper industry against this feeling of immobility. Some changes, like a rapid decline in home delivery, continue inexorably, almost without comment. But, year by year, they reinforce consumer primacy: the choice in all its promiscuity – this paper, that paper, or none? – is there on the rack at your railway station bookstall. Other changes – a burgeoning of TV channels, an explosion of internet usage – are far more obvious. But, again, they are the bringers of increased competition, increased choice. The consumer has so many ways of keeping in touch. Why should newspapers alone assume that one size (and sometimes one edition) fits all? You can produce your paper in two different sizes, one for the commute and one for the kitchen table. You can polybag a variety of additional sections and charge accordingly, more or less for more or less. You can throw in CDs rather than extra tonnes of newsprint. You can mix and match services between your print paper and your website.

And at last those lessons are starting to be learned. On current form, maybe before this article itself is printed, The Independent will have ditched its broadsheet edition entirely and gone “compact” from Sunday to Saturday. That may be a shrewd competitive move, and it will certainly improve the thinking power behind the Indy tabloid; but it is by no means the only move available. The Times, for instance, will surely go on publishing in two shapes for years to come, and its best circulation results come when the two sizes taken together find an enlarged audience.

The Guardian, perhaps, will do something different again: perhaps the Telegraph – and certainly the FT – will do nothing. There is no need to follow exactly the same road, because the logic for every paper and every audience is different. No one can suppose that going tabloid is some miracle elixir. It wasn’t for the Express, long ago, when it followed the Mail. It hasn’t staunched the slide in evening newspaper readership or red-top sales. But shape itself is only a beginning, not an end.

Size is important

Have we reached that second, super-compact stage yet? Not until all Simon Kelner’s full creative force goes into developing the tabloid and ditching a broadsheet that he lacks the resources to sustain. Not while The Times clings to the convenient cover story that its broadsheet and tabloid contents must be the same. There is absolutely no reason why that should be so. Indeed, a tabloid which is no more than a shoehorned version of big broadsheet brother will soon wear out its welcome if it becomes an automatic recycling exercise. The true second stage begins when separate logic in separate circumstances dictates its own, wholly separate solutions.

The Guardian, with its weight of job advertisements varying from day to day, has one set of imperatives, for instance. The Independent has quite another. The Guardian can sell in excess of a third more copies on Saturday than it does on some weekdays. The Independent now sells more through the week than its does on Saturday. And there are many other points of difference across the market: in age profile and geographic pattern of readership. Some problems are common, to be sure. Too many fluctuations in sales through the week: a flagging and snapping of the newspaper-buying habit. But all the players start from different points, and there is no more sense in thinking that a wholesale and uniform move to tabloid-only will meet the circulation challenge any more than the existing tack of adding extra broadsheet pages and sections on any morning where sales flag. We have to be more various than that.

I can, if I wish, get my news headlines and breaks on my mobile phone. I can, if I wish, produce an index of cross-references on the back page of my tabloid which, with a quick wipe across a sensor, will call up the full text version of those tales. I can download a digital paper from my home computer, and tailor it to my special interests. I can access City prices whenever they change, not at the end of trading. I can hunt the web for the jobs and services I need. All these opportunities, and more, are part of a newspaper’s remit. They are facts, fancies, news and views assembled by a skilled team and designed for a particular audience. They help define you, just as much as a regular purchase of the Telegraph or Times defines you. They are the basic and continuing core of our function. We shall, ten years’ hence, either have grasped them or got trapped down more blind alleys of inertia.

The quality tabloid revolution? It will roll on, giving a surge of adrenaline, showing what’s possible when you produce newspapers, which, in shape or pace, fit readers’ lives. It is a natural step beyond the tabloid feature second sections The Guardian began more than a decade ago. It puts the wishes and habits of young, busy readers first and stakes out richer ground beyond the metropolitan morning freesheets. It may shake up the middle market mightily as the Mail and Express face challenges from above as well as below. It could see chunks of current red-top readership – say, those Mirror readers who liked its brief excursion into more serious journalism – migrate to The Independent or The Guardian.

These are shifts with seismic consequences. They are vital, because Fleet Street was losing touch. They put the reader back in charge. But they are no end in themselves. What did Spain do next, after the compact became ubiquitous? It began, especially on Sunday, to sell its papers in parcels of sections so that you could choose what combination of supplements you wanted at what price on the newsagents’ counters. It began to publish whole papers in different language editions. Tabloid, in short, wasn’t enough. Tabloid was necessary work in progress. But “progress” itself was the crucial word; and “work” meant a limitless appetite to keep taking pains.