How do approvals and sign-off work day to day?

One named approver, one round of edits, a 24-hour turnaround: that is the whole workflow, and it is worth writing down in week one. You sign off on your quotes, your messaging, and any announcement before it ships. You do not approve individual pitches. Reporters work on deadlines measured in hours: on the live-request channels they use to source stories, the working norm is a reply within about two hours. Slow approvals are one of the most common ways coverage dies.

Separate visibility from approval. You should be able to see every pitch that goes out under your name. You should not be a gate on each one. An agency sending 7,000+ targeted pitches a year cannot route each through your inbox and still hit a reporter's deadline. If an agency asks you to approve every pitch, the messaging work was never finished. Ask them to finish the messaging document instead of adding a review step.

Sort what crosses your desk by what actually needs your eyes:

• Your quotes and claims - you sign off, because only you can stand behind them
• Messaging and positioning - approve the document once, then let pitches draw from it; how that document gets built is the messaging-and-positioning page
• Announcements and the release - sign off on facts and tone before anything ships
• Individual pitches - visibility yes, approval no

Keep control without becoming the bottleneck:

Watch for two failure modes in month one. An agency that ships things you never saw is a trust problem; raise it the day you find it. A founder who sits on drafts for three days is the more common one, and it quietly wastes the retainer you are paying. When a reporter replies at 4pm asking to confirm a quote by 5pm, the only variable left is how fast you answer.

Your one non-delegable job here is the sign-off itself. Decide who holds it before kickoff, then answer inside the window you set.