Date: Thu, 11/17/2005 11/18/2005 November 18, 2005 Contact: Joe Webb, TU West Virginia Council, joewebb@charter.net West Virginia TU Receives National Award for Best Newsletter Trout Unlimited, the nation’s leading coldwater conservation organization, has awarded its West Virginia Council with the Bollinger Award for Best Newsletter for 2005. Joe Webb of Williamstown, editor of the WVCTU newsletter The Tale of the Pool, received the award at TU’s recent national convention in Denver. “The Tale of the Pool is engaging and provides the medium for a terrific balance of articles,” said Steve Moyer, TU’s Vice President for Government Affairs and Volunteer Operations. “Joe does an outstanding job of seeking out news and interesting features as well as laying out and producing this fine communications tool. The Tale of the Pool goes above and beyond the basic purpose of a newsletter and acts as a regular call-to-action, an events calendar, and an entertaining tool for providing pictures, graphics, and fly fishing tips for the state of West Virginia.” Webb, who also serves as president of the local Blennerhassett Chapter of TU and secretary of the West Virginia Council, said many people throughout the state deserve credit for the success of the newsletter. “Being an organizational newsletter editor usually means you do all the writing, all the photography, all the layout and all the production,” he said. “Our volunteers in West Virginia do an outstanding job of submitting relevant articles, exceptional photography and valuable feedback that makes our newsletter an important tool in carrying out our mission to conserve, protect and restore our state’s trout streams and their watersheds.”<> The Bollinger Award is presented annually by TU in memory of longtime volunteer Jean Bollinger, who espoused the importance of a newsletter to keep volunteers linked together and up-to-date on grassroots conservation issues, as well as council and chapter activities. Current issues of The Tale of the Pool can be viewed on the WVCTU website at www.wvtu.org.