I did a phone interview last week with Kara Walsh, chief executive of Metromix, and learned a little bit about what the online entertainment guide is up to these days. Metromix is owned by Gannett and Tribune, the newspaper publishers and broadcasters that own, among other things, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times and Newsday.

Metromix is set up so that people who live in various cities where it is active can look up restaurants for reviews and locations, and perform similar searches for other entertainment information. The sites rely on users for contributions, as well as from hired help in the markets where it’s active.

Metromix is one of the “vertical” sites co-owned by the two companies, and just like quadrantONE, the national advertising network site for their local and national papers and TV stations, it is designed to help them reel in advertising as their print products see it decline.

Metromix has been active in Chicago for a while, but last year began its expansion into more cities. Walsh said the expansion — with the goal of being in 25 of the nation’s top 30 markets — is going according to schedule. Here’s what else I learned:

Number of monthly unique visitors according to:

- comScore: 951,164

- Nielsen: 1,149,000

Number of monthly pageviews according to:

- comScore - 8,052,000

- Nielsen -  6,655,000

Walsh said page views are up 37 percent, and unique visitors are up 25 percent.  Metromix won’t share its revenue, but it’s up 88 percent in the first four months of 2008, compared with last year.

Sites like these have to be kept full of fresh information in order to remain relevant. Does Metromix work for you? Let us know.