Last Wednesday, I had the pleasure of attending the
Northern Illinois Newspaper Association Fall Conference and awards dinner.

Highlights of the evening included a presentation by Pulitzer Prize winner Deborah Nelson and accepting four NINA awards on behalf of The Courier-News.

(That's my smiling mug in the picture below.)

This year The Courier-News earned honors including...

• First place for column writing: Julia Doyle
• Second place for headline writing: Julia Doyle
• Third place for a religion story, a.k.a. the Owen Phelps Award: Katie Anderson (me)
• Third place for sports column writing: Erik Jacobsen

Click the blue text for a full winners list, which includes accolades for reporters and photographers from our sister publications including The Beacon News in Aurora.

More about NINA and the keynote speaker after the jump.

Sure, at last night's school board meetings, Elgin School District U46 passed a "tight" budget. And Carpentersville-based Community Unit School District 300 passed a budget with a $6.5 million deficit.

But the biggest news on the education beat here at The Courier-News?

Your education reporter Emily McFarlan (i.e. me) got engaged to her boyfriend of two years, Joel Miller, last weeked.

OK, in no way, shape or form do I have any delusions that is the biggest news on any beat at the Courier (especially not with the impact the state financial crisis has had on our schools), but several people have asked in the past week if I planned to blog about our engagement. And we did promise to give you a peek at our lives "between the bylines" on this blog, such as when, oh, our homes are broken into. After all, you are so gracious as to share your stories with us in the newspaper when these things happen.

Plus, my fiance game me the OK to announce our engagement here on the blog, with the caveat to be "sparse."

Perhaps your one chance to offer wedding advice, gush about wedding-y stuff, after the jump.

It's not often--

"--that the reporters actually get to be witnesses."

Courier-News correspondent Janelle Walker finished my sentence.

Not unless you're Janelle, and you're sitting in Elgin bond call when the accused launches into a rhapsody that starts with, "I WANT MY BOND. WHAT'S MY BOND?" and ends with, "I'm going to pop a cap in your..." uh, matriarch-expletiving expletive. And did I mention he wasn't wearing a shirt at the time? That's what happened when Alex S. Barrera of Elgin (that's him, pictured at right) appeared Friday on theft charges in a video hookup with Judge Bruce Lester.

When I picked up the Saturday police reports documenting Barrera's second trip to bond call, this time on charges of threatening the life of a public official, they named a "Courier-News freelancer" as a witness (the police usually erase the names of the innocent before handing reports out to the papers). After Barrera's threats Friday, the officer filing the report had asked Janelle if he could get some more detail from her, she said.

"Can I just e-mail you my notes?" she asked.

Janelle had been typing the whole time, she said.

"It's what we do every day. So that was funny. ... That's the difference between an eyewitness and a reporter -- we write things down."

That's why I'm taking Janelle's word Barrera had threatened to "pop" the judge's beep-beeping beep. That was how both journalists at bond call quoted him in the police report. Other witnesses had him saying he'd "put a cap in" the judge's blankety blank blank.

And that's yet another reason why we need newspapers: Journalists make the best eyewitnesses. We're trained eyewitnesses. And you'll want us on your side when your lawyer maintains "pop" leaves a lot more wiggle room than "put a cap in."

-- Emily McFarlan, Readers' Reporter

There are some things time and technology may never replace. The feeling of a newspaper page between your inky, newsprint-stained fingers, for instance. (Anybody...? No? Just me?)

But for everything else, well... it seems like there's an app for that.

Like price comparison.

Sure, you can drive around to every grocery store in the Fox Valley area (or nine of them) to find the best prices as several Courier-News reporters and editors, myself included, recently did for Dave Gathman's cover story, "Are You Bagging a Bargain?" Or you can download one of the many barcode-scanning, price-comparing applications now available on your smart phone.

Just point and scan... after the jump.