What's the best way to get a basic knowledge of HTML?

If you know where to look (which I'm sure everyone here can provide enough links) you shouldn't have to pay much, if anything, unless you really struggle with the tutorials.

Here's some for starters:
W3 Schools - The best place to start, in my opinion.

Html.Net

or if you need a really basic tutorial, here's one designed for kids
Html for Kids

Good luck!!

(btw I'm confident that there's enough html fluent users on here, that if you have a question, we can probably help :D )

HTML for dummies is how I started

It's tough to know how much (and what kinds of) technical knowledge you'll need. I think the best place to start would be with an informational interview with someone who has a job as a web producer. They'll be able to tell you what you'll need to know to be competitive.

One option would be to get a degree, but if you're good at picking stuff up on your own, that's probably cheaper and might be just as fast. Depending on how much you need to know, it could take a year to learn. Then again, if you'll only be involved on the content side, you might not need much technical knowledge.

It sounds like what you really want it to begin blogging, correct?

sadly i learned initial html from myspace profile customization

I'm not convinced that knowledge of HTML is necessary to "make the transition from print journalism to the Web." Most sites use some form of content management and WYSIWYG editors, so the more important issues for a writer (IMHO) are an understanding of how *reading* on the web differs from reading in print, so, things like the importance of scannable text, bulleted lists, etc. Unless there's something I'm missing here about your question, if I were you I would spend my time reading one of the many, many great articles about how to write effectively for the web. How long it takes is up to you, but it shouldn't cost a penny. Here's what I turned up in 30 seconds of Google searching:

http://www.sun.com/980713/webwriting/
http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/wiki/writing/
http://www.macloo.com/webwriting/
http://www.knowledgeboard.com/item/379

"Teach Yourself HTML and CSS in 24 Hours" is a great book - http://tinyurl.com/3822du - I taught myself HTML out of it, and used it to write my first website.

Since then, though, I've found that you can create a pretty great website just using one of the free blog editors out there (I use WordPress for mine, but there are lots of options). It doesn't give you as much flexibility as designing a site from scratch, but if you have a basic understanding of HTML an CSS (which I got from the book), you can go in and edit the templates to tweak it the way you want...