As I mentioned in a recent post, I planned to attend last week's Religion Newswriters Association national conference in Austin, Texas.

Alas, some family circumstances (to which my bride and fellow GetReligionista Tamie Ross alluded in her introductory post) prompted me to cancel at the last minute.

I hated to miss the conference but followed it from afar via the Twitter hashtag #RNA2013. Just a few of the interesting tweets:

The growth of no religion is snowballing. It's generational churn as the unreligious grow among the Millennials. #RNA2013

— Religion NewsService (@RNS) September 28, 2013

As #RNA2013 meets, Associated Church Press asks denoms to “stop this serious erosion of religious journalism.” http://t.co/nczbSN7bRi — Adelle Banks (@AMBankstw) September 27, 2013

Religious hostility incidents in US have doubled in last year according to Liberty Institute research. #RNA2013 — Amanda Greene (@iwritereligion) September 26, 2013

Great to see longtime friends at #RNA2013 & meet new ones, such as this critter at an Austin street fest. pic.twitter.com/T568sSU2Do

— faithandworks (@faithandworks) September 29, 2013

Congrats & thanks to @BobSmietana for agreeing to accept election a president of board of Religion Newswriters #rna2013

— Kay Campbell (@KayTimes) September 27, 2013

Among the headlines that emerged from the conference: Hobby Lobby's Steve Green unveiled the "oldest Jewish prayer book ever found," Billy Graham's grandson said that evangelicals have a "worse" sex abuse record than Catholics, and the Pew Research Center released an embargoed survey finding that more than a fifth of American Jews say they have no religion. (GetReligion's Mark Kellner analyzed some of the media coverage of the Pew study last night.)

Also at the conference, RNA presented its annual awards, honoring the best in religion reporting. Adon Taft, longtime religion reporter for the Miami Herald, received the William A. Reed Lifetime Achievement Award.

Many of the RNA first-place winners' names will be familiar to regular readers of GetReligion — names such as Michelle Boorstein of the Washington Post,Tim Townsend (formerly) of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,G. Jeffrey McDonald of The Christian Science Monitor,Jaweed Kaleem of the Huffington Post and David Gibson of Religion News Service. Other names, including Matthew Miller of the Lansing State Journal and Rebecca Nakashima of Biola University, might be new.

Not to bury the lede (or claim false humility as I make a shameless plug), but RNA even managed to recognize yours truly.

Yay, @bobbyross and @jaweedkaleem for winning first and second place in the magazine category for religion writing. #RNA2013

— Sarah Pulliam Bailey (@spulliam) September 29, 2013

Here at GetReligion, we spend a lot of time scrutinizing holy ghosts in less-than-stellar journalism.

But the kind of top-notch religion reporting evident in the RNA winners' stories inspires us.

Be sure to enjoy the links.