The nation is about to elect a president. And whatever the outcome, history is in the making.

With that in mind, Election Year 2008 was chosen as the theme for this year's Urban Journalism Workshop, a two-week cram course for selected high school journalists. The summer workshop -- the UJW for short -- has been held annually in Richmond since the mid-1980s, with the exception of a year off in 1992.

It's a bit of a laboratory. Take a dozen high school students, most of whom have met each other only once, put them together for two weeks of intensive journalism instruction and hands-on work, hope they mesh, and pray for the best.

This year, there wasn't much need for hope or prayer.

The 12 participants were chosen by an advisory board consisting of the workshop director and associate director -- both from Virginia Commonwealth University's School of Mass Communications -- and six

Richmond Times-Dispatch reporters and editors.

VCU, The T-D and the Dow Jones Foundation Inc. annually sponsor the workshop. This year the Virginia Press Association also chipped in with a generous donation.

The students' story assignments ranged from campaign technology (did you know Barack Obama has more than 1 million Facebook friends, while John McCain has about 150,000?) to immigration as a factor in the race.

The student journalists came from three city school systems -- Richmond, Charlottesville, and Bristol -- and counties in a geographic spread from Henrico to Floyd.

They learned about the changing world of print journalism, working with Times-Dispatch multimedia journalist Chris Young to produced video news reports as well.

Times-Dispatch staffers pitched in to help, to mentor, to teach, as they do every year, and we had plenty of volunteers from the community as well.

Richmond Commonwealth's Attorney Michael Herring, for instance, stopped by to share his thoughts about his job, public service, politics, and the upcoming elections. People from throughout the metro area agreed to be interviewed for the writers' stories.

But the workshop is really about 12 young people who were willing to give up a couple of weeks of their summer to hone their skills.

So, without further ado, let us salute the UJW Class of 2008: