Comms Shifts To Amplification And Editorial Judgment As Every Team Becomes A Publisher

The communications playbook was built for a world that no longer exists. HR teams, product leads, executives, and employees are all publishing directly, while newsrooms shrink and platforms fragment how information spreads. As the idea that comms owns the message has eroded, the role itself has changed. It’s less about pushing polished announcements and more about identifying what actually matters, shaping it early, and placing it in the right context. AI has only accelerated that shift, removing the friction from content creation and putting more pressure on judgment. The advantage now goes to teams that can think like editors, not just write like communicators.

Lara Pritchard, Vice President of Regional Communications at Charter Communications, approaches communications like a field assignment. She has spent more than 25 years working across large-scale operations, managing messaging that reaches millions of customers. At Time Warner Cable, she led the production and distribution of hundreds of content packages annually, ensuring consistency across channels while coordinating with teams across marketing, HR, product, and corporate communications. Pritchard's experience shapes how she expects her teams to operate. Instead of functioning as traditional publicists, she encourages them to act like reporters, moving through the organization, observing closely, and translating what they see through the lens of a consumer.

"Comms people are all over the organization, not just in comms functions. The value they bring is the ability to facilitate, hone in on the message, and make it valuable to the audience they’re really trying to serve," says Pritchard. To build the ideal team, Pritchard often looks outside the traditional pipeline. She wants people who naturally spark conversations and ask the right questions. "You have to widen the net," she explains. "It might not necessarily be somebody who traditionally came up through the communications ranks. They may have a college degree in something completely different. I want someone who can have a conversation and find those stories."

• Pass the mic: Today, almost every department has its own megaphone. Recruiting, field operations, and product teams frequently publish directly to their own audiences. Recognizing that reality, comms leaders now operate as executive editors who sit down with human resources or tech operations to translate narrow updates into wider brand narratives. "Everybody in the comms function will notice that lots of other functions are comms people, too," Pritchard says. "Everyone's a comms person because the overarching goal is pushing the company message. There is always a bigger story there. If there is, we should be the ones helping and working with them to facilitate and tell that story as best as they can."

• Walking the halls: Relying on a single press release is no longer the default strategy for many internal audiences. Each function has its own norms, and each market has its own context. A product launch treated as a landmark event in one state might register as routine background noise in another. To capture those nuances, Pritchard relies on local communicators who act as news consumers first. They are expected to know what their communities care about and spot the moments where corporate initiatives intersect with real-world concerns. "I think you have to have people physically there," she notes. "You need people who are going to walk around those buildings, find those stories, see what people are talking about, have their pulse on the community. That is how you can create that local angle for how a story might resonate or might not."

Inside Charter, some of the most impactful changes in story discovery come from habits people have built on consumer platforms. Employees who post on Instagram or Snapchat are far more comfortable capturing their own moments at work. Pritchard sees that behavior as an asset. "You have all these social platforms out there, and folks have gotten comfortable using them and sharing their own personal stories," she notes. "Why not engage an internal audience where you have 90 plus thousand employees and say, 'What stories would you tell about us?'"

• Feed for the feed: The editorial shift is also changing how content gets produced. Short-form inputs like photos and quick clips from employees can be turned into timely posts, allowing teams to maintain a steady cadence without relying on long-form write-ups. The result is a more responsive flow of content, one that keeps pace with audience expectations and makes it easier to stay visible and relevant. "Before, you would engage a leader, ask what stories they wanted to tell, and write three paragraphs," she says. "Now, we want a regular cadence of content to fill. When we get a quick pic, it is easy for us to build a short story around that, and that increases your volume of content."

• Less glaze, more grit: For internal audiences, authenticity carries more weight than polish. Employees are quick to recognize when content feels overly produced or disconnected from their day-to-day experience. Pritchard points to an example involving an internal mural project where local students painted artwork on office walls. Rather than bringing in a camera crew, her team used photos captured by employees themselves, reflecting the project as it was experienced on the ground. "Documenting a project with unpolished imagery means much more to employees than using glazed-over photos that look like someone spent a tremendous amount of money and time. That sometimes drives mistrust."

While the editorial work happens close to the field, the political work still has to happen at the top. Some senior leaders grew up in an era when corporate stories were tightly controlled, and they often need proof that a more open, multi-platform approach works. Pritchard uses analytics from AI tools to assess how specific stories performed and what actually happened as a result. "Once conservative leaders see the analytical value and realize that it was actually successful, you can walk them slowly toward an environment where they will be more willing to share," she says. In Pritchard's view, to build that trust, comms needs a seat at the table from day one. "As comms, if you are not there from the beginning and you are not the real person in the room, you have already missed it."

• AI for the good: That need to demonstrate value in real terms recently led to one of Charter’s more resonant stories. A western product group hosted an employee hackathon focused on using AI to improve the customer experience. On the surface, it could have been treated as a routine event recap, but Pritchard’s team framed it as a window into how employees were applying technology in practical, positive ways. "The intriguing part was the ability to take something like that where a group is just doing an exercise to improve our customer experience, which we are always trying to do, and to hear that they did it through using AI. Instinctually, that says, here is AI for the good."

The editorial model doesn’t replace polished content, it makes it more selective. High-stakes, long-term initiatives still benefit from deliberate production and structure. But for everyday moments, Pritchard finds that simpler, more authentic content often resonates more clearly with employees and audiences. "There has to be a balance," she concludes. "Some of the larger, really important messages that may last all year, like a rally or a specific program, take more time. But the quick hits, the authentic content generated by the users and the employees themselves, can be just as meaningful."