Roles overview
The four newsroom roles, the viewer, and what each can and cannot do.
HermesAI distinguishes roles (permissions) from titles (presentation).
- Roles decide what you can actually do. Four roles + viewer.
- Titles are what your team calls you. Editor-in-chief, Managing editor, Desk editor, Reporter — these are titles you assign for display purposes.
A "Desk editor" title can pair with role member (default) or admin (if they need to manage monitoring rules). The role determines the permissions; the title is for the team's mental model.
The roles
Prop
Type
Permission matrix
| Action | Owner | Admin | Member | Viewer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Read feed | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Read published stories | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Open story workspace | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | view-only |
| Compose / refine drafts | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — |
| Submit draft for review | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ (own work) | — |
| Approve / reject in review | ✓ | ✓ | with assignment | — |
| Manage monitoring rules | ✓ | ✓ | — | — |
| Manage team | ✓ | ✓ | — | — |
| Manage workspace settings | ✓ | ✓ | — | — |
| Manage integrations | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Manage billing | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Transfer ownership | ✓ | — | — | — |
Per-role guides
Newsroom owner / admin
Workspace setup, team management, integrations, billing.
Editor-in-chief
Editorial leadership, the review queue, sensitive coverage policy.
Desk editor
Managing a beat, assigning reviewers, coaching reporters.
Reporter
The everyday workflow — feed, draft, refine, submit.
Titles you'll see in the product
These are display labels. Assign them to people from Team.
- Editor-in-chief — top editorial authority.
- Managing editor — runs the day-to-day editorial floor.
- Desk editor — owns a beat or section.
- Reporter — files drafts.
- Viewer — read-only stakeholder (subscribers' rep, board observer, contractor, etc.).
Newsroom admin vs platform admin
Two different 'admin' words
- Newsroom admin is a role inside your tenant workspace. Manages your team, monitoring, and settings. This is what these docs cover.
- Platform admin refers to HermesAI staff with cross-tenant access. Not relevant for newsroom users; lives behind a separate
/adminsurface that customers don't see.
When this documentation says "admin", we mean the newsroom kind unless we explicitly say "platform admin".