ere's news. Even though college campuses are some of the most wired places on Earth, printed versions of college newspapers remain far more popular than their online editions.

That is why, as university and college newspaper editors prepare for the returning flood of students in coming weeks, most will be focused more on putting out the best paper-and-ink reports they can muster than on meeting the special demands of adapting campus journalism to the Web.

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"There are a lot of Web-design majors on our campus, but not many of them have time available for the job," Schellene Clendenin, the summer editor at Oregon State University's Daily Barometer, said last week. The Barometer, which is published weekly during the summer, has not updated its Web site since June.

It is not only limited resources that have kept the emphasis on paper at college newspapers. Campus readers also still apparently prefer the old-line medium.

"It's easier to take a printed copy to class and read it when there is a lull," Ms. Clendenin said. "It's easier to sit and read it than take your laptop to class."

Media experts say that, as with other sorts of newspapers, the Web versions of college papers remain more a complement to the print publications than potential replacements.

"It takes a change in people's personal behavior and an advancement in reader technology to make people switch to the online newspapers, but they are not coming," said Ron Yanosky, a senior analyst who follows higher-education technology at Gartner Inc., a technology research firm.

There seem to be no definitive statistics on how many of the nation's thousands of college newspapers even have Web sites. One national study, conducted last spring by Student Monitor, a market research firm, found that only 30 percent of college students said their campus paper was available online, up from 27 percent a year earlier.

And among those who were aware that the college paper was on the Web, only 29 had read at least one issue online in the prior month — compared with 44 percent who had read at least three of the prior five printed issues.

Some college papers' Web sites, especially those at large universities, do receive fairly heavy traffic — not necessarily by current students, but by parents, alumni and random surfers from other states and abroad. One such paper is The Arizona Daily Wildcat, at the University of Arizona. Last April, for example, the paper's Web site had about 300,000 different visitors, who viewed about a million pages. Many of those viewers were not on campus, according to Mark Woodhams, director of student media and adviser to The Daily Wildcat.

At the University of California at Los Angeles, Arvli Ward, director of student media, said that only about one-third of the 9,000 visitors each day to the Web site of The Daily Bruin were students living on campus.

With Web versions of college newspapers attracting few campus readers, advertisers are reluctant to spend much money online trying to reach the college crowd.

Mike Canan, editor of The Post, the student paper at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, said that even those advertisers who regularly bought space in the print edition were unwilling to pay for Web ads. "We even tried to give them incentives, but they were not interested," Mr. Canan said. "So far, we've made no money from online advertising."

Even among the publications that have succeeded in attracting online ads, the revenue is a small fraction of what they take in from print ads. At The Wildcat, revenue from the online edition last academic year was about $30,000, compared with about $1.3 million from the printed version. "The revenue we get from online advertising comes from sale of local and classified advertising," Mr. Woodhams said.

And so, a vicious circle has developed. The fitful efforts to put college papers online and the scant local readership have resulted in a dearth of advertising revenue that is limiting resources for developing the Web sites. So instead of hiring their own Web masters, a number of college publications have assigned the task to outside companies like College Publisher, which provides publishing technology that enables students with barely any experience with the Web to post articles and multimedia on their Web sites. About 220 college newspapers, including those at Boston University, Rutgers and Ohio State, now use the services of College Publisher. In exchange for putting the papers online, the company, which is based in Boston, gets the right to sell online and print advertisements in the publications.

But even with professional Web help, many college editors find that most of their campus readers prefer the printed page. Last year, for example, the staff of The Iowa State Daily in Ames used technology from Digital Partners, a company in Lincoln, Neb., to revamp the publication's Web site, adding video clips and expanding the online coverage to include breaking news. But Erin Randolph, the publication's summer editor in chief, said the online edition showed no sign of siphoning readers from the print publication.

Advocates of the Web say that advances in technology will gradually increase the online readership of college papers. John Fees, chief executive of College Publisher, says about 200 of the college publications his company works with now employ an online subscription service that the company rolled out last fall. The service sends e-mail news updates, with links to the Web site, which Mr. Fees said had driven more student traffic to the site.

"We don't think that this is a sign that the online newspaper will replace the printed one," Mr. Fees said, "but it is indicative of a trend we believe to be forming in how students interact with their campus newspaper."

There are a variety of reasons for students to read the college paper online, of course, including convenience, to catch up on past articles or because the campus bins of printed copies have already been depleted.

"Some students want to read the news before it gets to print," said Matt Donnelly, editor in chief of The Daily Northwestern. "They make reading the online newspaper part of their morning routine along with checking e-mail and national news."

But for most students, the print version of the college paper remains part of campus life.

"Take a trip to any student union, and you will see a bunch of students sitting at the table who read newspapers and socialize," said Eric Weil, the managing partner of Student Monitor. "You can't move that kind of activity to the Web."