The #1 Role Your Content Team Needs in 2026 Is a Managing Editor

After years of struggling to keep up, content teams face a new challenge: deciding what to publish.

Writers, editors, and designers form the backbone of a content team. Content calendars get built around the team’s production capacity, and since time is always tight, AI has become the obvious path to faster output.

AI allows any marketing team with a credit card and a prompt library to fill next quarter’s calendar in just days. HubSpot’s 2026 State of Marketing report found that 86.4% of marketing teams use AI, with 42.5% reporting extensive use for content creation. AI can be used for tasks like drafting, outlining, summarizing, and editing—all in minutes.

The result is that teams have more drafts than they can review. More pieces are ready for approval. Teams now have more content than they can manage. But who has the time to make sure every piece doesn’t sound like every other AI-generated draft out there?

The person who decides what gets published and what stays hidden controls the entire process. This role is often called a content manager or editorial lead in many organizations. These roles have traditionally been hired to keep the calendar full, manage freelancers, and move pieces through review. These job descriptions focus on throughput: how much content is produced, how fast, and for which channel.

But many organizations still write the job descriptions for these roles as if it were 2016. What most teams need now is a managing editor—a role defined by quality and taste, not throughput.

Faster Work Still Needs Better Judgment

With AI, what once required a week from a team can now be accomplished in an afternoon. But there isn’t a simple plug-and-play solution for content creation because every organization does it differently. For example, Klarna successfully reduced sales and marketing agency expenses while boosting campaign output. But these improvements were not solely due to AI. They stemmed from revamping image production, copywriting, and agency workflows first. AI became effective only after the surrounding system was enhanced.

In other words, AI should be integrated into effective human processes, rather than the reverse. At Charter’s AI Summit, Microsoft’s Katy George noted a shift: “We used to pay attention to adoption, now we just pay attention to performance.” The perspective on AI adoption strategy is relevant for content operations, as increased speed leads to higher volume. But this shift creates additional pressure on those responsible for quality. With each additional draft, risk is introduced. And every piece that falls short of the standard expected by consumers can lower how a brand performs or is perceived.

The fundamental questions behind each piece remain unchanged.

• Is it worth publishing? Does it reflect our voice?
• Does it add value or detract from our work?
• Is the argument compelling or merely easy to digest?
• Will we be proud of it a year from now?

For content teams, AI is being deployed faster than it’s being governed. EY’s latest survey found that more than half of AI projects in departments are happening without proper supervision, and almost four out of five leaders say they can’t keep up with the business risks that come from using AI too quickly. What often results is an inconsistent voice and weakened editorial judgment and brand standards.

At Contently, the managing editor role is what closes that gap for our clients, keeping work on-brand and on-standard as output scales. Six functions define the role. The managing editor:

• Sets the publishing bar. Defines what “good” looks like for each asset type, channel, and audience, establishing the rubric against which everything else is measured.
• Stewards the brand voice. Voice—the one thing a competitor can’t copy—is often one of the first things to drift with AI. That drift has to be caught early, before it becomes a pattern.
• Draws the authorship line. Decides where and when AI drafts are appropriate and where it never touches the page. Those decisions are live judgment calls that evolve alongside the tools, rather than a static policy filed away in a wiki.
• Carries institutional memory. Knows what’s been said, what didn’t land, what’s already been tried. Only a human can hold that kind of knowledge over the years.
• Translates standards into briefs that writers and tools can actually execute. This is the operational bridge between taste and production.

What You Don’t Publish Is Doing the Real Work

Here’s a lesson many teams have learned as AI adoption continues in content operations: when production is cheap, pieces that never see the light of day do the real work. Why? Because it gives those pieces that are most on-brand the spotlight. A publication that ships less but with a clear point of view builds a strong readership over time. In contrast, a publication that releases more to fill a calendar loses trust with every forgettable post. Readers quickly notice the difference.

Voice consistency is a valuable asset. What a brand shares defines it, multiplied across many touchpoints. Teams that feel this most are those who’ve seen a strong voice fade due to high volume. Over a year or two, readers may stop recognizing it.

The managing editor focuses on decision-making, not just production. They choose what the publication will endorse and, equally important, what it won’t.

What to Hire For

Seven traits to look for:

• Voice stewardship. Hears drift early, before it becomes a pattern.
• AI fluency for triage. Knows which drafts to trust, which to send back, and which to scrap, and can explain why in each case.
• Brief translation. Turns editorial standards into operational criteria that writers and tools can run against.
• Institutional patience. Treats the publication as a long-term project rather than a quarterly campaign.
• Cross-functional authority. Holds the line with marketing, product, legal, and leadership without relitigating every piece.
• A reader’s ear. Can tell when a sentence is fluent but hollow, or technically correct but off-key.
• Willingness to be unpopular internally. The job requires saying no to people with more organizational weight than the editor has, so hire someone who’s done it before.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Contently has been serving clients for years, even before the current volume issue. Managing editors work closely with in-house teams. They ask for pitches, assign briefs, and edit each piece to fit the brand’s voice and strategy.

The effectiveness of this setup lies in its structure. One person makes the final call, ensuring each piece aligns with the client’s strategy.

Today, anyone can create content. What will define a brand in five years is a unique point of view that endures through the AI era. That endurance will separate one publication from another as volume becomes free and quality remains rare.

However, survival isn’t guaranteed. It relies on someone in the organization who is paid, trusted, and empowered to decide what gets published. Most content teams have writers and tools. What they lack is a dedicated decision-maker, because judgment will be the key constraint in 2026 and beyond.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does a managing editor actually do that a content manager doesn’t?

A content manager is usually measured by throughput—pieces shipped, deadlines hit, calendar filled. A managing editor is measured by judgment: what made the cut, what didn’t, and whether the publication still sounds like itself a year in. The two roles overlap in operations but diverge in authority.

Why does this role matter more now than it did five years ago?

Because production is no longer the bottleneck. When any team can generate a month of drafts in an afternoon, the constraint shifts to deciding what’s worth publishing. That decision is where brand voice lives or dies.

Can AI replace a managing editor?

No. AI can draft, outline, and summarize, but it can’t hold years of context about what a publication has said, what’s landed, and what sounds off-brand. That kind of institutional memory is still a human job.

What’s the single most important trait to hire for?

A reader’s ear—the ability to tell when a sentence is fluent but hollow or technically correct but off-key. Most of the other traits can be taught.