(photo by C. Goldsmith and D. Rollin/CDC Public Domain)

Well, that didn’t take long. Only a couple of weeks into the new school year, and already U.S. college campuses are getting hit with cases of the H1N1 flu virus.

College media are covering the story, and if your newspaper hasn’t done anything on the virus – already declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization last spring – now would be a good time to start.

Here are some of the colleges already hit by the virus:

University of Illinois: U. of Ill. students sick with suspected H1N1 flu — chicagotribune.com

Case of H1N1 virus confirmed at Armory House | The Daily Illini

Vanderbilt University: Possible H1N1 cases at Vanderbilt nearly doubles to 52 with 10 confirmed | InsideVandy

University of Kansas: University begins to prepare for H1N1 : Kansan.com

Texas Christian University: University not to disclose number of students showing flu symptoms – News

Georgia Tech: Hundreds affected by H1N1 virus – August 28, 2009 – Technique

University of Alabama:  Crimson White – Flu season comes early

University of Georgia: H1N1 infects dorms – News

University of Tennessee: Swine flu rises at US colleges; 100 cases suspected at UT » Knoxville News Sentinel

Carnegie-Mellon: The Tartan Online : Campus prepares for H1N1

Western Carolina U.: Western Carolinian – H1N1 Flu Cases Suspected at WCU

University of Colorado: Swine flu at CU-Boulder: 40-50 students possibly infected with H1N1 – Colorado Daily

Xavier University-Cincinnati: The Xavier Newswire – Front Page – week of August 26, 2009

Seven H1N1 Cases Confirmed At Xavier University – Health News Story – WLWT Cincinnati

These are just the schools I found in a few minutes of searching the Google.

One common characteristic of all of these stories is the lack of links to other sources for information. If you’re going to write a story about H1N1, the least you could do for your online audience is put up a link to the CDC’s flu.gov web site, so people can find out more than they can in the 12-inch news story. There’s also the Flu Wiki, which provides a roundup of flu news from around the world.

This is basic online journalism 101, and the minimum that should be included in any online story about an important health situation.

In this instance, I have to single out Vanderbilt’s InsideVandy as a positive example. Reporter Sara Gast did provide links in her story to other news sources about universities that were experiencing outbreaks, but no links to the CDC or Flu Wiki. IV also posted a video and a Q&A with a preventive medicine professor.

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