Amsterdam News Grows Its Legal Notice Business Through an Expanded Partnership With Column

Column prepares to route significant new legal notice volume to Amsterdam News, a new Column Pro partner, thanks to Column’s growing Automated Placement network.

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NEW YORK — September 21, 2026 — Amsterdam News is expanding its partnership with Column to strengthen its legal notice operations, create more capacity for growth, and gain access to new high-volume notice business from organizations using Column’s Automated Placement network across New York.

The expanded partnership builds on years of work between Amsterdam News and Column to modernize the newspaper’s legal notice business. During that time, Amsterdam News has used Column to make notice placement easier for customers, improve payment collections by 150%, and grow an increasingly important and resilient source of revenue for the newspaper.

Today, Amsterdam News is taking the next step by becoming a Column Pro partner, deepening the operational relationship between the two organizations. Column Pro gives Amsterdam News a dedicated team of public notice specialists — Column Reps — who work alongside its staff to manage legal notice workflows and support customers.

At the same time, Column is preparing to send substantially more legal notice volume to Amsterdam News through its growing Automated Placement network.

Automated Placement — a product Column launched earlier this year — is a first-of-its-kind infrastructure layer for the public notice ecosystem. Through API or structured email integration, it connects Column directly into high-volume organizations’ existing workflows and gives them one centralized way to manage public notice publication at scale across the U.S. As more organizations adopt the service, Column can help its partnered newspapers increase the volume of public notices they receive.

For Amsterdam News, the partnership strengthens both sides of their business: improving margins by reducing operational burden and growing top-line revenue by bringing new notice volume to the paper.

“Amsterdam News has been an extraordinary partner to Column for years,” said Megan Villanueva, CEO of Column. “They are a respected institution with an incredibly important role in the communities they serve, and we don’t take their trust lightly. The fact that our partnership continues to deepen is meaningful to us. We’re thrilled to keep earning their trust and help Amsterdam News build a stronger, more modern legal notice business.”

History of the Partnership

Amsterdam News did not make the decision to move more of its legal notice operation to Column lightly. Legal notices represent hundreds of thousands of dollars in business for the newspaper. They also carry responsibilities far beyond a typical advertising transaction: deadlines, accuracy, compliance, customer support, and the legal consequences of getting something wrong.

For Rachael Tipping, who oversees operations and finance at Amsterdam News, that makes specialized expertise essential.

“Public notice is a subject matter you should have an expert on,” Tipping said. “These are legal notices. If you mess up, somebody’s legal standing could be compromised.”

Amsterdam News’ confidence in Column Pro was built over years of using Column’s technology and working directly with Column’s team.

“Column’s team are the subject matter experts. We never would have handed as important a process as legal notices to an outside company without having built that several-year relationship we built with Column,” Tipping said. “We got to see how they work, how they treat people, how much they prioritize responsive customer service, and how much they know about public notice — not only in New York, but nationwide.”

That trust extends to Amsterdam News’ customers, who have been using and getting to know Column for just as long as the newspaper has.

“Column is a high-quality product run by high-quality people,” Tipping said. “We know it, and our customers know it. With Column Pro, we’re all one team. We’re excited to announce this next step in our partnership to our customers.”

What is Column Pro

Column offers publishers several ways to work together, depending on how much operational support they want from the partnership. Column Pro is the most comprehensive offering — Column’s deepest and most full-service partnership model, giving newspapers not only specialized public notice technology but also dedicated staff, who add deep public notice expertise to the newspaper’s existing team. 

Pro is designed for newspapers that want to do more than make their public notice operation more efficient. It’s for publishers looking to accelerate growth across the business. By putting specialized legal notice work in the hands of experts, it creates more capacity for newspaper teams to focus on their highest-value revenue and growth opportunities.

Each Pro newspaper partner gets a dedicated team of U.S.-based Column Reps, who come from the best legal notice departments at newspapers across the country. They know public notice workflows inside and out, work closely with publishers and their customers, and are deeply invested in modernizing the industry while keeping newspapers central to the public notice process.

Because Column Reps work in Column’s platform every day, they can process hundreds of notices each week while reducing errors and providing faster turnaround times. That efficiency allows them to deepen customer relationships, respond quickly, and provide the careful oversight legal notice work requires.

For Amsterdam News, becoming a Column Pro partner represents more than operational efficiency. It enables their staff to invest in new revenue opportunities and the broader future of the publication. Previously, processing legal notices was a full time job. With its new team of Column Reps taking on that workflow, Amsterdam News can redirect that capacity toward growing other revenue streams, including digital and social media advertising.

“Column Pro enables us to have our team focus on a different revenue source and new growth — digital and social media sales — which is imperative,” Tipping said.

150% Increase in Payment Collections

Column’s partnership with Amsterdam News up until this point has already changed the economics of its legal notice business.

Before adopting Column in 2023, Amsterdam News reported collecting only 30 to 40 cents for every dollar of legal advertising it sold. After moving its workflow onto Column and introducing Column’s set of collections tools — including prepayment, digital payments, reporting dashboards, and automated invoice reminders — the newspaper now collects nearly 100 cents on the dollar.

Amsterdam News went from potentially leaving 60 to 70% of legal advertising revenue uncollected to collecting nearly all of it.

“Column has positioned us to collect near 100 percent of every dollar sold on legals,” says Siobhan “Sam” Bennett, the President and Chief Revenue Officer of Amsterdam News, New York, NY

In a historically low-margin industry, strong cash flow is imperative. Column sees collections as one of the most important ways it can support publishers, and over the next two quarters, the company is making a major investment in new tools and services designed to help newspapers recover more of the revenue they have earned.

Across the nearly 2,000 publishers Column works with, the company is building a clearer picture of payment timelines, where receivables get stuck, and which workflows create the greatest financial burden. Those insights — combined with direct feedback from publishers — are informing a new generation of collections tools built around what newspapers need most.

“We hear consistently from publishers that collections and cash flow are among the hardest parts of running the business,” Villanueva said. “Because we work across such a large network, we have a unique view into payment rates and where the process could be improved. We’re using that data — and what partners like Amsterdam News are telling us directly — to build tools that help publishers collect more of what they’ve already earned and get paid faster.”

As a new Column Pro partner, Amsterdam News will be working closely with Column’s team to help shape that next generation of tools. The partnership is already informing improvements in financial reporting and workflows designed to reduce A/R and make cash flow more predictable.

A new pipeline for growth

The expanded partnership is also creating a new source of revenue for Amsterdam News — in one of the most competitive legal notice markets in the country.

Amsterdam News is now preparing to receive significant additional New York notice volume through one of Column’s newest Automated Placement relationships, with the potential for thousands of additional notices — and meaningful new publication revenue — over time.

With Automated Placement, Column serves organizations that place large volumes of legal notices across many jurisdictions and need a simpler, more reliable way to manage publication at scale. Those organizations contract directly with Column and pay a processing fee on each notice placed through the Automated Placement service. In return, they get the technology, automation, and operational support needed to centralize and streamline what has historically been a fragmented placement process, while newspapers continue to receive the full publication revenue for each notice.

As more businesses adopt Automated Placement, that growth translates directly into new notice volume and revenue for Column’s newspaper partners. By giving organizations a reliable, sustainable way to keep placing notices at scale, Column connects publishers to consistent high-volume business that would be difficult for any individual publication to acquire or service independently.

In New York’s highly competitive newspaper market, Amsterdam News is especially well positioned to benefit. As one of New York’s longstanding and highly respected publications, Amsterdam News offers advertisers the trust, credibility, and local reach that come with a deeply established presence in the community. Column is honored to provide the technology and infrastructure that make it easier for large organizations to place with Amsterdam News consistently and at scale — helping turn that reputation into new, durable revenue for the paper.

“We’re glad to have a partner that we can talk with candidly, knowing that we’re both working toward the same goal,” said Ali Milliner, Advertising Sales Manager at Amsterdam News. “Column wins when Amsterdam News wins, and that shared focus is ultimately what creates a better experience for our customers.”

For two longtime partners, that alignment is what makes the model work: an improved experience for advertisers, more legal notice volume for Amsterdam News, and stronger public notice infrastructure for everyone involved.

About Amsterdam News

Founded in 1909, the New York Amsterdam News is one of the nation’s oldest and most influential Black newspapers, serving New York City with exceptional reporting and commentary on local, national, and international issues.

About Column

Column makes public information more accessible and reliable by modernizing the infrastructure behind public notice. Its platform brings together newspapers, governments, law firms, businesses, and the public in one system for placing, publishing, managing, and accessing important notices.