Springer Science+Business Media or Springer is a global publishing company which publishes books, e-books and peer-reviewed journals in science, technical and medical (STM) publishing. Springer also hosts a number of scientific databases, including SpringerLink, Springer Protocols, and SpringerImages. Book publications include major reference works, textbooks, monographs and book series; more than 50,000 titles are available as e-books in 13 subject collections.^[1] Within STM, Springer is the largest book publisher and second-largest journal publisher worldwide (the largest being Elsevier), with around 55 publishing houses, almost 6,200 employees and around 2,000 journals and 7,000 new books published each year.^[2] Springer has major offices in Berlin, Heidelberg, Dordrecht, and New York City.

History[link]

Julius Springer founded Springer-Verlag in Berlin in 1842.^[3][4] In 1964, Springer expanded its business internationally, opening an office in New York. Offices in Tokyo, Paris, Milan, Hong Kong, and Delhi soon followed.

The academic publishing company BertelsmannSpringer was formed after Bertelsmann bought a majority stake in Springer-Verlag in 1999.^[3][5] The British investment groups Cinven and Candover bought BertelsmannSpringer from Bertelsmann in 2003.^[5] They merged the company in 2004 with the Dutch publisher Kluwer Academic Publishers which they bought from Wolters Kluwer in 2002,^[6] to form Springer Science+Business Media.

In 2009, Cinven and Candover sold Springer to two private equity firms, EQT Partners and Government of Singapore Investment Corporation. The closing of the sale was confirmed in February 2010 after the competition authorities in the USA and in Europe approved the transfer.

In 2011, it acquired Pharma Marketing and Publishing Services from Wolters Kluwer.^[7]

Electronic products[link]

Springer provides its electronic book and journal content on its SpringerLink site, which launched in 1996. SpringerLink is operated by MetaPress, a division of EBSCO Industries.^[8]

SpringerProtocols is home to a collection of protocols, recipes which provide step-by-step instructions for conducting experiments in research labs.

SpringerImages^[9] was launched in 2008 and offers a collection of currently 1.8 million images spanning science, technology, and medicine.

SpringerMaterials^[10] was launched in 2009 and is a platform for accessing the Landolt-Börnstein database, the world's largest and most comprehensive source^{[citation needed]} of research and information on materials and their properties.

AuthorMapper^[11] is a free online tool for visualizing scientific research that enables document discovery based on author locations and geographic maps. The tool helps users explore patterns in scientific research, identify literature trends, discover collaborative relationships, and locate experts in several scientific/medical fields.

Open access[link]

For some of its journals, Springer does not require its authors to transfer their copyrights, and allows them to decide whether their articles are published under an open-access license or in the traditional restricted license model.^[12] While open access publishing typically requires the author to pay a fee for copyright retention, this fee is sometimes covered by a third party. For example, a national institution in Poland allows authors to publish in open access journals without incurring any personal cost.^[13]

Selected imprints[link]

Journals[link]

See Category:Springer academic journals.

Selected publications[link]

• Encyclopaedia of Mathematics
• Ergebnisse der Mathematik und ihrer Grenzgebiete (Book series)
• Graduate Texts in Mathematics (Book series)
• Grothendieck's Séminaire de géométrie algébrique
• Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Springer Series in Surface Sciences (Book series)
• Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics (Book series)
• Zentralblatt MATH

See also[link]

• List of publishers
• Media concentration
• Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, of which Springer is a member (due to its Open Access branch, Springer Open)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• SpringerLink

The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page. (November 2011)

"Corporate media" is a term which refers to a system of mass media production, distribution, ownership, and funding which is dominated by corporations and their CEOs. It is sometimes used as a term of derision to indicate a media system which does not serve the public interest in place of the "mainstream media" or "MSM," which tends to be used by both the political left and the right as a derisive term.

Background[link]

Media critics such as Robert McChesney,^[1] Ben Bagdikian,^[2] Ralph Nader, Jim Hightower,^[3] Noam Chomsky,^[4] Edward S. Herman,^[5] and Amy Goodman suggest that such a media system, especially when allowed to dominate the mainstream media, inevitably will be manipulated by these same corporations to suit their own interests. These critics point out that the main national networks, NBC, CBS, and ABC, as well as most if not all of the smaller cable channels, are owned, funded, and controlled by an interconnected network of large corporate conglomerates and international banking interests, which they say manipulate and filter out news that does not fit their corporate agenda.

Propaganda model[link]

Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman have established a propaganda model which purports to explain this bias. The common misinterpretation of this model is that all bias is conscious and centralized. The process however is hypothesized to be decentralized and operates as a confluence of factors that includes the overt pressure from owners and advertisers, but also by the gradual internalization of the biases and values of the corporate owners, leading to self-censorship.

Other factors include the tendency of journalists to avoid doing original research, instead obtaining news from the same few wire services, such as Reuters and Associated Press, which themselves tend to cover the same news under the same perspective. Due to the desire to reduce operation costs, the mainstream media favor news pieces that are pre-made by these news agencies instead of conducting their own reporting.^{[citation needed]}

Impact of public relations on news and public affairs programming[link]

This same economic pressure makes media susceptible to manipulation by government and other corporate sources through the widespread use of press releases, often created by industry-funded public relations firms.^{[citation needed]}

Impact of the corporate media propaganda model on world events and society[link]

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. No cleanup reason has been specified. Please help improve this article if you can; the talk page may contain suggestions. (April 2011)

The point of view and statements made by governments, officials, military, police, national security organizations (such as the FBI and CIA), as well as various other political offices are regularly reported as facts and are published without any (or very little) fact checking by the corporate media. Perhaps the most infamous current example of the impact of the propaganda model on world events and societies was during the two year period following the 2001 US attacks. During this time, according to a five year in-depth research project conducted by the Centre for Public Integrity; the President of the United States George W. Bush and seven high ranking officials in his administration made at least 935 false statements about the threat posed to the world and to US national security by Saddam Hussein. These false statements were virtually uncontested by the corporate media and presented as a sound rationale for both the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the "War on Terror". [1] The result was the "manufacturing of consent" for the invasion of Iraq and "The Global War on Terror/ism" in which hundreds of thousands of people have lost their lives to date. As an example, Jessica Yellin on Anderson Cooper 360 admitted being pressured by corporate executives to present positive stories during the run up to the Iraq war.

ANDERSON COOPER 360 Transcript of Jessica Yellin reporting:

COOPER: Jessica, McClellan took press to task for not upholding their reputation. He writes: "The National Press Corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq. The 'liberal media' -- in quotes -- didn't live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served." Dan Bartlett, former Bush adviser, called the allegation "total crap." What is your take? Did the press corps drop the ball?

JESSICA YELLIN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I wouldn't go that far. I think the press corps dropped the ball at the beginning. When the lead-up to the war began, the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president's high approval ratings.

And my own experience at the White House was that, the higher the president's approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives—and I was not at this network at the time—but the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president. I think, over time...

COOPER: You had pressure from news executives to put on positive stories about the president?

YELLIN: Not in that exact—they wouldn't say it in that way, but they would edit my pieces. They would push me in different directions. They would turn down stories that were more critical and try to put on pieces that were more positive, yes. That was my experience.

Factcheck.org (Factcheck.org), created by the Annenberg school of Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, found hundreds of misrepresentations in political ads that were never corrected by the mainstream media. Studies also show that those who rely on the media for their information have a poor understanding of the issues and are unable to discern misrepresentations in political advertising.^{[citation needed]}

As documented by authors Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, it is becoming increasingly common for video news releases (VNR) to be created by government and corporations, mimicking TV news story-format, to be used straight into broadcasting in a newscast.^{[citation needed]} Other factors include the cost of litigation. Large corporations tend to sue over any news that are against their interests, causing great expense for the news editors. Even if the litigation is lost, the cost of time and pressure will certainly bias a reporter towards avoiding such possibility.

Interlocking Corporations, Corporate Power, and its Social Influences[link]

To illustrate the growing problem of monocracy, Bagdikian notes that in the 1980s, "less than 1 percent of all corporations, have 87 percent of all sales. [The corporates] are the aristocrats of the American Industrial economy; the remaining 359,500, in terms of their national power, are the peasantry." This conflict continues to arise as "dominant media companies are further [integrating] into the ruling forces of the economy." The directorates of major companies interlock with others and control the content of multiple dominating media and information distribution, i.e. newspapers, magazines, radio and television companies, book publishers, film industries, and even multinational banking investors. They become directly influenced by still other powerful industry, creating the "Endless Chain" of mass media and economic aristocracy (Wardrip-Fruin, 479).

Several issues arise from the fusion; under law and business ethics, the director of a firm is obligated to act in best interest of the company he or she is involved in, and failure to oblige under some circumstances can be a federal crime. This creates a dilemma in the governance of mass media: the same person may be trapped in a situation where working for the best interest for one may damage the other corporation. Another problem which arises is that the same person can abuse his or her power to get away with injustice as exemplified by Bagdikian: "When Sears was accused by the Federal Trade Commission of dishonest advertising and promotion, the Tribune was one of the major papers that failed to carry a word of it... (Wardrip-Fruin, 481)." Here, a market industry was able to conceal their crime of fraud since it was also interlocked with the news media, one of the main distributors of such significant information.

In summary, the concentration of massive media firms that control American public information is troublesome for the potential for deception misleads the public away from reality. The Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs state that these facts raise fundamental issues as they can bear on social issues and possibly control the shape and direction of the nation's economy. It is further derived that "the summits of American business now control or powerfully influence the major media that create American public opinion" (Wardrip-Fruin, 483).

See also[link]

• Broadcasting
• Citizen Media
• Media bias in the United States
• Media democracy

Notes[link]

1. ^ McChesney, Robert. "Rich Media, Poor Democracy", ISBN 0-252-02448-6, University of Illinois Press, 1999; "The Problem with the Media", ISBN 1-58367-105-6, 2004
2. ^ Bagdikian, Ben, "Media Monopoly", ISBN 0-8070-6179-4, Beacon Press, 2000
3. ^ Hightower, Jim, "What Liberal Media?", "There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road Except Yellow Stripes and Dead Armidillos", ISBN 0-06-092949-9, Harper Perennial Press, 1998
4. ^ Manufacturing Consent
5. ^ Manufacturing Consent

References[link]

• Long, Paul and Wall, Tim : Media Studies: Text, Production and Context, Pearson Education, 2009, http://www.doingmediastudies.com/
• CNN Anderson cooper 360 May 2008 Jessica Yellin reporting/The Huffington Post
• Wardrip-Fruin, Noah and Nick Montfort, eds. The New Media Reader. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003. ISBN 0-262-23227-8. "The Endless Chain" by Ben Bagdikian, pp. 471–483.

External links[link]

• Independent World Television
• FAIR: Corporate Ownership
• The Nation: Corporate Media & Consolidation
• 'Media Studies: Text, Production and Context' book by Paul Long and Tim Wall from Birmingham City University
• Fairness Doctrine Vetoed by both Ronald Reagan and G.H.W. Bush

Julius Springer (May 10, 1817 – April 17, 1877) was a German publisher.

In 1842 Springer founded the retail bookshop Springer at the address Breite Strasse 20 (now No. 11), which later, as the scientific publisher Springer-Verlag, passed to his sons Ferdinand and Fritz and today is one of the largest and most prominent academic publishers in the world. In 1848 he took part in the side of the insurgents in action against the authorities. Springer was from 1867 to 1873 president of the Booksellers Association of the German booksellers. From 1869 until his death, Springer was a member of the Berlin city assembly. In addition, he was one of the pioneers of the national and international copyright law.

Plaque[link]

Plaque at Breite Straße 11 in Berlin-Mitte

The text of the plaque at Breite Straße 11 in Berlin-Mitte reads:

Julius Springer

1817 - 1877

Verlagsbuchhändler, gründete an dieser Stelle

am 10. Mai 1842 den Springer Verlag,

heute einer der größten Wissenschaftsverlage der Welt.

(Julius Springer, 1817–1877, publisher, founded here on the 10th of May 1842 Springer-Verlag, today one of the biggest scientific publishing houses in the world.)

External links[link]

German Wikisource has original text related to this article: ADB:Springer, Julius

• Kurzbiographie
• Verlags- und Familiengeschichte