Please join me in congratulating my journalism students on the first edition of this academic year of our online publication, TheThunderbird.ca.

My colleagues and myself at the UBC Graduate School of Journalism have been working with our grad students on stories from their beats in Vancouver.

It was their first major assignment of the semester. This week was crunch time, with Thursday being an intense day of final edits and online production.

The student uncovered a range of issues, from plans to open an illegal crack cocaine smoking space to the beetle decimating Vancouver lawns.

There are also stories about H1N1, from confusion over the vaccine to the sporadic presence of hand sanitizers in the densely populated West End of the city.

With Vancouver ramping up for the 2010 Winter Olympics, students looked at the controversy around  Olympics lessons in schools, the impact on refugees, and the unexpected consequences of the planned road closures.

The students are taking a well-earned break this weekend, before we start work on the second issue next week.