i am trying to solve this exact same issue; we publish several magazines and each one needs to have its own domain.
i have been able to figure out how to use wordpress 3.0 and install it with all the multisite options, mapping subdomains to give each of our magazine websites a unique wordpress instance that is all managed under one, “superadmin” account; so that all went great.
now what i need to do is figure out how to “post” an article to more than one website; or as you suggested post and article and then push it out to the others as a draft so those website editors in those areas can decide if they want to publish that article on their own site.
i wonder if there’s a plugin out there for this? that’d be awesome.