Gardner Business Media Introduces New Editorial Roles Covering Robots and Sustainability

Gardner Business Media (GBM) is creating two new editorial roles to focus on emerging topics of broad importance across manufacturing — robots and autonomy; and sustainability. Julia Hider, a senior editor with GBM writing for the company’s Modern Machine Shop brand, will expand her role to become the company’s correspondent on robots and autonomy, covering the topic for all GBM brands. Hannah Mason, technical editor with GBM writing for the company’s CompositesWorld brand, will expand her role to become the company’s correspondent on sustainability in manufacturing, also covering the topic for all GBM brands.

“Our role as a media company serving manufacturing continues to evolve,” says Rick Kline, GBM president. “Across all our brands, which serve part producers in metal, plastics and composites, we have come to see that it is not enough to inform audiences just by reporting on the ideas and technologies most closely associated with them today. Particularly for manufacturers in higher value markets, the need they face is to produce more responsively — to use systems and technology to continue to reduce time and cost. To help them in this, we need to continue to bring them technology possibilities that are just ahead of where they are today.”

GBM is manufacturing’s media company. The company produces magazines, digital content and events aimed at discrete part manufacturers in fields such as machining, plastics processing, composites, finishing, mold making, additive manufacturing and more. These two new editorial roles recognize that some of the most notable developments affecting all the company’s audiences involve trends and technologies that do not land cleanly in a single brand’s coverage area. The new roles are likely to serve as a template for other, similar positions in the future covering other emerging technology areas.

Hider, the new robots and autonomy correspondent, has a history of reporting for various audiences in the company. In addition to writing for Modern Machine Shop, she has also served on the company’s Additive Manufacturing and Production Machining teams. Her new role will explore the ways ongoing advances in robot technology — including autonomous movement, collaborative-style robots, vision systems and interactions with artificial intelligence — are changing the flow and infrastructure of automated manufacturing.

Mason, the new correspondent for sustainability in manufacturing, has been exploring themes of reuse and circularity in industrial production as part of her work for CompositesWorld. Her new role expands on this and will enable her to report on emerging technologies and initiatives for promoting energy efficiency, recycling and reducing carbon footprint as they relate to manufacturers throughout GBM’s coverage areas.

Gardner Business Media is a publisher covering the heart of manufacturing in North America — providing one-of-a-kind, relevant information of keen interest to the people who power plants, shops and factories. GBM was founded in 1928 as Gardner Publications Inc. in Cincinnati, Ohio, with the introduction of Modern Machine Shop magazine.