• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, January 26, 2007

Freedom Interactive, the online unit of Freedom Communications, Thursday debuted the first 13 of 40 affiliated Web sites it plans to relaunch by the end of March. The revamped sites are part of a broader effort by Freedom, which owns more than 70 newspapers and magazines including the Orange County Register, to make online a more central part of its business.

Kicking off its "Phoenix Project," Freedom relaunched sites of its broadcast Web sites, including those of KTVL in Medford, Oregon, CBS6 in Albany and WTVC in Chattanooga. Improvements to the sites include streamlined navigation, faster page downloads and Web search powered by Google.

By midyear, the company expects to relaunch all 225 of its sites including those of secondary publications, according to Michael Mathieu, president of Freedom Interactive. During the year, the sites will also add more and more Web 2.0 features including blogs, video-sharing and interactive event calendars. "We want these to be community portals--not just news and information sites," said Mathieu, who joined the company in July from United Online.

On the business side, Freedom is building a national sales force in cities such as New York, Chicago and San Francisco to sell display advertising on its network of sites. Also in the works is a national telephone sales center to help support its online classified business in key categories such as real estate, autos and employment. In November, Freedom signed a deal with career site Monster to power job listings on its newspapers.

The goal of these efforts is to increase the proportion of Freedom's online revenue from 4% to about 15%, according to Mathieu. "That's what the big newspapers are doing," in terms of online revenue, he said. The Internet's growing importance among newspapers was underscored Wednesday when The Los Angeles Times announced that Latimes.com would become its primary vehicle for breaking news.