»Some people say that the days of publishing houses are past and gone. In a day and age in which anyone can basically act as a publisher because all you need is a computer and Internet connection, these institutions have lost their right to exist. Quite to the opposite, as others declare: publishing houses are more just the organization of print products, that may no longer be required in future. In actual fact, they transform a plethora of information into a treasure trove of knowledge by selection, evaluation and verification, design and by disseminating contents to the appropriate target groups. Which is why we will continue to need publishers. Those protagonists who forecast that publishing houses will have a future, perhaps particularly in a digitized world, like to point to Riepl’s law, according to which a once established medium can never be fully displaced by a new one. Accordingly, newspapers exist in spite of radio, and cinemas exist despite of television. What is your opinion on this controversy, Mr. Woll? Are we experiencing the refutation of Riepl’s law today, are we eyewitnesses to the net superseding old media forms?«