What a Press Release Approval Workflow Should Record

By Kevin Mahoney

A press release approval workflow should record five things: which exact version was approved, who approved it and with what authority, what was checked (facts, legal or compliance review, publisher rules), what the publisher decided, and what was actually published. If your log cannot show that the text submitted is the same text someone signed off on, it is not doing its job. Below is the approval log I recommend, followed by what I could verify and what I could not.

Why the log matters more for press releases than for blog posts

A blog post on your own site is usually easy to correct after it goes live. A release submitted through a distribution route is different, because the publisher controls what happens after submission. MBK's own press release service terms divide responsibility three ways: the customer controls the truthful facts, sources, quote approval, media rights, and final copy approval. MBK controls planning, formatting, submission management, and the publication record. Publishers and platforms control acceptance, labels, presentation, and downstream pickup.

That division is the reason to keep a log. When something goes wrong, the first question is always “who decided what, on which version?” A shared inbox and a folder called “final_v3_REAL” cannot answer it.

What I verified, and what I did not

I read the MBK service terms page, Google's spam policies, and ACCESS Newswire's content guidelines. The log below is my recommended structure. It is not a publisher requirement, and I have not verified how any publisher stores its own review records. Nothing here is legal advice. The log records that a review happened; it does not replace the reviewer.

The approval log template

Copy this into a spreadsheet, a project tool, or a shared document. Keep one log per release, and never overwrite entries. Append new ones.

1. Release identity

• Working title and order or project reference
• The single announcement the release covers (one news event, stated in one sentence)
• Route or publisher, and the date you last read that publisher's rules
• Named owner of the log

2. Version record (one entry per change)

• Version ID, date and time, and who made the change
• What changed, in plain words
• Why it changed: fact correction, legal or compliance comment, customer request, or publisher request
• Status: draft, in review, approved, submitted, accepted, published
• Where the exact text of this version is stored

3. Fact and source record

• Each factual claim, number, and date, with the supporting document and who supplied it
• Each quotation, with the name and title of the person quoted and proof they approved the wording
• Rights for images, logos, and trademarks
• Every link in the release, with the date you confirmed it works
• Anything you could not verify, marked as unverified rather than left silent

4. Legal and compliance review

• Reviewer name and role, and whether they are internal or outside counsel
• The version ID they actually reviewed
• Scope: what they were asked to look at, and what they were not
• Outcome: approved, approved with conditions, or not approved
• The conditions or open items, and who closed them
• Flag whether the topic is high-scrutiny, such as health claims, supplements, financial content, or anything involving a stock ticker or litigation

5. Publisher-rule check

• Headline states a real, timely news event
• The company behind the announcement is identified near the top
• Valid media-contact email is present
• Objective tone, with no first-person or direct-address sales language outside an approved quotation, no exclamation marks, and no all-caps emphasis
• Whether the route may require written executive authorization or extra documents
• Whether the subject falls into a restricted or extended-review category

6. Customer approval

• Name of the approver and their authority to approve for the company
• The exact version ID approved, and the date
• A statement that approval covers that exact copy only

7. Submission record

• Date, route, and who submitted
• The version ID submitted, which must match the version ID approved

8. Publisher response

• Accepted, held, changes requested, or refused, with the date
• The reason as the publisher stated it
• For any requested change: the new version ID, and whether it needs renewed customer approval
• Which refund or credit rule applies to a refusal (see the note below)

9. Publication record

• Primary publisher URL and original publication date
• A saved copy of the published text, compared against the approved version, with differences noted
• Link destinations, anchor text, and any link attributes you can observe on the live page
• Downstream pickup you actually found, listed by URL. Record none if none was found.

10. After publication

• Corrections requested, who requested them, and the outcome
• Date you last confirmed the primary URL was live
• Date of any removal notice, and the order or publication reference you would need to cite

Legal review: record the scope, not just the sign-off

A log line that says only “legal approved” proves very little. It does not show which version was reviewed or what the reviewer was asked to cover. If counsel reviewed version 2 and the release that went out was version 4, the log should make that visible, not hide it. Record the version reviewed, the scope, and any conditions. If the reviewer only looked at one claim, say so.

Publisher rules add a second layer that is separate from your own legal review. ACCESS Newswire's guidelines say every release must be legally and factually accurate, and that some content may need written authorization from a company executive. They also list restricted categories, including affiliate product reviews, unsafe weight loss, health supplement, or sexual enhancement claims, and releases naming brand-name prescription or over-the-counter drugs. Its editors make the final call. So a release can pass your legal review and still be held or refused by the publisher. Log both decisions separately.

Version control: the approved text must equal the submitted text

MBK's terms state that the customer approves the exact copy before submission, and that the publisher keeps final authority over the title, formatting, labeling, links, and presentation. They also say publisher-requested changes may extend the timeline and may require renewed customer approval. Turn that into a rule: any change after approval, including a publisher's, creates a new version ID and triggers a fresh approval decision. Even a one-word fix goes in the log. You can decide that a small change does not need re-approval, but write that decision down with the name of the person who made it.

Links: log them, because publishers and Google both care

Google's spam policies treat paid advertorials or native advertising as link spam when the links pass ranking credit, and they name optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites as a further example. The same page says buying and selling links is not a violation when the links are qualified with a nofollow or sponsored attribute. MBK's terms add that the publisher controls link treatment. Two practical consequences follow. First, write anchor text that describes the destination for the reader rather than the keyword you want to rank for. Second, in the publication record, note what you observe on the live page, since you cannot assume how a route will handle links. Whether a given link passes any ranking value is something I have not verified and would not promise.

Paid distribution is not earned coverage

The log should not blur this line either. Paying to distribute a release through a route is different from a journalist choosing to cover your news. MBK's terms say pickup, indexing, rankings, traffic, leads, and sales are not guaranteed. So the pickup field in your log should hold only what you found, never what you hoped for. An empty field is honest data.

Refund and credit terms can differ, so record which applies

ACCESS's own guidelines say a rejected release gets an account credit to be used within 60 days rather than a refund. MBK's service terms say MBK's refund commitments to its customers are the ones on its terms page, not the publisher's retail credit policy. If you use any route, the log should note which policy governs a refusal before you submit, so nobody is surprised afterward.

What remains uncertain

• Publisher rules change. ACCESS's guidelines page says so, and MBK's terms tell customers to review the current guidelines before supplying final copy. Log the date you read them.
• I have not confirmed the internal review records that any publisher keeps, so treat the log as your record, not theirs.
• I cannot tell you how much review a given release needs. That depends on its claims, its category, and your counsel's judgment.

The next practical decision

Before your next release, decide who owns the log and what counts as a new version. Those two decisions do more than any software. Then read your chosen publisher's current rules and record the date, so the publisher-rule check in section 5 is tied to a specific reading rather than a memory.