Robert Stewart, an associate professor at Scripps, reports all 16 seats were taken the second day of registration, unheard-of for an elective. Moreover, students lucky enough to be able to register seem famished for knowledge.

"They're very high on learning these skills before they get out of here," Stewart reports. The course attracted master's and even doctoral candidates studying newspapers, broadcast journalism, public relations, advertising and magazines. "I've never sensed this kind of demand for any course I've taught before."

Stewart is just one of many American journalism educators who are rerevamping curricula, hiring staff and building new facilities to keep pace with the computer revolution.

Their challenge is to turn out graduates capable of gathering news for publication not only by conventional media, but also the World Wide Web. Their task is training the digital press corps.

The variety of educational initiatives is impressive:

• Indiana University is considering a proposal to graft journalism courses onto a telecommunications curriculum.
• Faculty and students at the University of Nevada in Reno have teamed up to build a Web site offering cowboy poetry.
• At Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, seniors in the capstone magazine course are publishing two electronic titles.

Not all educators are convinced, however.

Professor Thomas R. Berner, head of the journalism program at Penn State's main campus in State College, resists the temptation to spend money on new hardware and software. He'd rather add a course on American history. He's worried the rush to embrace technology could cause educators to lose sight of the importance of basic skills.

Says Berner: "I'd rather have a kid come out knowing a little more about history and a little less hypertext markup language."

Other educators say lack of money gives them no choice. Gordon McKerral, a journalism professor at Troy State University in Alabama, trains his students to sift information as they carry out the famous gatekeeper function of editors.

"To me, that kind of training is more important than it ever was" due to the explosion of information, McKerral says.

Technology is an important driving factor. Suddenly it's quick and easy to communicate, whether via e-mail or the World Wide Web.

It is also becoming much easier to publish text, graphics and video on the Internet, thanks to off-the-shelf Web page building software costing as little as $100 per copy.

As computer use rises among Americans, time spent with conventional media diminishes. What's more, experts say, an increasing amount of advertising is moving from conventional to digital media. Advertisers are now willing to pay large sums to have an icon bearing their company logo posted on some of the Internet's more popular home pages.

But perhaps the loudest wake-up call for educators is coming from the marketplace. When a University of Kansas undergraduate with Web page-building skills is offered a job with a starting salary of $42,000, even college deans stand up and take notice.

Stewart, the Ohio University professor, says he's become almost obsessed with the need to get Web skills into the hands of students.

One recent Sunday evening, he received a telephone call at home from a woman on the journalism school's advisory board. The editor-in-chief of a new media venture for the Cleveland Plain Dealer told him that she had eight job openings, but no applicants from Scripps. Stewart shifted into high gear. "I've never had a news director call me on a Sunday night telling me how desperate they were to hire our students," Stewart says. "At home, no less!"

Using computers to disseminate news is becoming more feasible as the number of people who can read computerized news rises.

The breakthrough came with the advent of inexpensive Web browsers: software applications that permit computer users to "visit" host computers to read information stored there. A digital journalists' work now involves building those pages of information in a format that can be viewed by the millions of people who use those browsers.

How quickly all of the country's journalism schools begin offering courses in digital journalism depends on a number of factors.

A change in accreditation standards could affect that pace. To remain accredited, journalism schools currently must meet 12 standards. An effort is under way to revise the standards to include a reference to new media.

A hearing was held in August during the annual meeting of the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications.

Susanne Shaw, the accrediting council's executive director, does not favor a rigorous standard. Shaw teaches journalism at the University of Kansas and it makes her uneasy to visit a university - especially a public university - and tell the provost that it will cost $250,000 to bring the journalism school up to snuff. She favors a more relaxed standard in keeping with the financial resources of the nation's public schools.

In her mind, the crucial word is exposure.

"I would hope that all of the schools would expose students to the online world," Shaw says.

Nonetheless, some journalism educators foresee a day when exposure will no longer be adequate.

Stewart predicts that in two years building and maintaining Web sites will become basic skills for journalism students, like using computers for word processing today.

Money is another key variable. It can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase computers, network them, hire technicians to keep them operating properly, and then find and hire qualified faculty to teach students how to use them.

For all the colleges revamping curricula, there are probably an equal number that cannot due to financial reasons, says McKerral, the professor at Troy State. Only schools blessed with large endowments seem to be able to move forward, McKerral said.

Meanwhile, many public institutions are retrenching because of budget cuts inflicted by state legislatures.

A closely related problem is the ability to attract faculty. Well-qualified teachers cost money, especially when a university must lure them away from exciting, ground-breaking work within industry.

To combat this fundamental problem, Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School is getting creative. Administrators there plan to take a staple of undergraduate professional training - the internship - and adapt it for use by faculty.

Golden notes that the pioneering work in digital journalism is mostly being done by recent college graduates. It could be 10 to 15 years before these professionals are ready to return to the classroom to teach full-time.

"Between now and then," Golden says, "We're just running as fast as we can."

Harting writes freelance articles on business and journalism issues from Liverpool, N.Y. Call 315/652-4680 or e-mail donharting@aol.com.