In reply to TheDrunkenBakers:
As ever, it is complicated and much depends on the size of the operation.
In theory - and legally - the editor is responsible for all content, as Gordon says higher up the thread. That's deciding what will be covered, who will cover it, the angle to be pursued, amendments to the content, and its position and prominence on the page or in the bulletin, The editor is also ultimately responsible for hiring/firing and promotions. They will also decide the paper's viewpoint, including political. Oh and allocating the budget which they will spend a lot of time fighting for.
Of course in most operations this is way too much for one person and they delegate much of the job to to section heads, like news eds, picture eds, features eds, sports eds, production eds etc who may also in turn delegate to their own staff. The real crap, such as a lot of the admin, will be backheeled to some burned out hack who will be given some meaningless fancy title like Managing Editor, even though they have little or no say in what goes into the paper and spend their time arguing over expenses.
How much autonomy the section editors like, say, sport or travel have will often depend on the Editor's own interest. If they don't care about sport or travel, those people will be left to run their own ship pretty much as long as they don't libel anyone or blow their budget.
In most cases a political editor can expect a lot of phone calls because editors and/or proprietors generally take a great deal of interest. It's a bit of a two-way street in that the editor/proprietor relies on the political ed to keep them abreast of what's really going on behind the scenes so political eds tend to have more access and influence with the bosses than other section eds. They can also sometimes baffle them with bullshit by talking about their confidential sources - 'oh I could not possibly give you a name' - but only if they call it right. They actually may not have to put up with much interference per se because editors/proprietors tend to appoint political eds in their own likeness who broadly share their views.
In the case of people like Laura Kuensberg/Robert Peston/Faisal Islam who do a lot of actual reporting there is not much time for overseeing anyone else and for the most part they would not even try to. Broadcasters are in any event reasonably tightly constrained by regulators. and, certainly in the case of the BBC, a huge hierachy of people with 'Editor' of 'Head of...' in their title. In their case part of the value in the title of 'Political Editor' is the prestige it confers since people will take a call or accept a dinner invitation from the BBC's Political Editor that they might palm off to a minion if it came from a mere 'correspondent'. The stardust of being on the box almost every night also dazzles some ministers and most MPs.
All that said, every operation is slightly different and even the same ones change according to the personality of the editor. Dacre was a workaholic and very hands on, personally reading every story, while others are more laid back. So the short answer (at the end of this very long one) is that editors do as much or at little of the above as time and their inclination allows.
