On the occasion of the oration by prof. dr. A.J.P.M. Overbeke, executive editor of the Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde, a symposium was organized on 16 June 2000. The lecturers were (chief) editors of medical journals. Many changes in medical publishing are to be expected in the next 10 years. The new technology will play an important part in this, but the details remain to be seen. Scientific journals can continue to exist in the electronic era if they produce legible, i.e. brief and clear articles in the printed version and offer extra information on the internet: details of methods used and statistical analyses and extensive tables. Also, the contributions of the various authors are printed. Not all, but only a few authors should make certain that the work described has indeed been performed and these would be responsible for the contents of the entire article. It appeared that the main part played by physicians in mass media is that of occasional informants. There still exist possibilities to use the media in distributing and supporting the messages of medicine and in elucidating the dilemmas. While 'archivist' journals mostly record scientific work presented, the task of the 'newspaper journals' consists of informing, interpreting, criticizing and stimulating. In this 'colouring' of the contents of the journal, the independence of the chief editors is of great importance. The innovations in medicine of the past century appear to be based mostly on the work of predecessors, of research physicians opposing established authorities, and on coincidence. The interval between discovery and publication has grown much shorter.