THE CUTTING EDGE: COMPUTING / TECHNOLOGY / INNOVATION : 6 Papers Launch On-Line Help-Wanted Classifieds : Advertising: With 23,000 entries, employment service initially will be free to job-seekers.

A group of six major newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, on Tuesday launched an on-line employment service that makes all of the papers’ help-wanted listings available via the Internet computer network.

The service, called CareerPath.com, is part of a broad effort by newspaper publishers to increase their presence on the Internet and find popular and profitable electronic uses for their printed information and advertising.

“It’s a very important move for newspapers to protect their classified [advertising] franchise. It’s one of the sweet spots of newspaper profitability,” said Charles Baker, a media analyst at Salomon Bros.

CareerPath.com features help-wanted listings from the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, San Jose Mercury News and the Washington Post. The service, which will initially be free to job-seekers and most of the papers’ advertisers, eventually plans to add other employment services, such as an electronic resume bank.

When the service officially began Tuesday, it included 23,000 job listings from the six papers. Job-seekers can search individual papers or the entire group by job category. The service can be located at https://www.careerpath.com/ on the World Wide Web portion of the Internet.

“We believe that local job databases can provide the backbone of a comprehensive national interactive employment service,” Richard T. Schlosberg III, publisher and chief executive of the Los Angeles Times, said in a statement. “On-line delivery of this information is the natural extension of the newspaper’s mission to provide information in whatever form the customer prefers.”

CareerPath.com will work with the New Century Network, an Internet content development and distribution company formed last April by nine major media companies, to attract other newspapers to the CareerPath.com service.

Advertisers will eventually be able to place ads exclusively on CareerPath.com without having to purchase a print ad. It will be up to each newspaper to determine what price to charge advertisers for inclusion in the service. The Los Angeles Times currently does not charge print advertisers extra, said Renee E. LaBran, director of planning and advertising marketing.

“A lot of advertisers have asked us for something like this,” LaBran said. “We are pretty confident that the demand will be there.”