Two people who do work for the Journal Star newsroom made a national listing and I wish they hadn't.

One still works here editing stories and writing headlines. The other, freelancer Paul Fell, no longer will draw editorial cartoons for our opinion pages.

MSNBC reporter Bill Dedman compiled the list of journalists who gave to political campaigns. He found 144, ranging from the ethics columnist for The New York Times to an Omaha Fox television reporter to a business reporter for The Des Moines Register. Most gave to Democratic or liberal causes.  See Dedman’s full report at www.msnbc.msn.com

/id/19113485/.

At the Lincoln Journal Star, copy editor Sylvia Hermanson made a $250 contribution to the Democratic National Committee in January.

Cartoonist Paul Fell gave $450 to the Democratic congressional campaign of Maxine Moul in 2006.

Hermanson notified her supervisors after MSNBC contacted her. She checked our newsroom ethics code and realized she had violated it. The code forbids political contributions by staffers who are involved in political coverage. As one of about a dozen news copy editors, she is involved in political coverage in that she edits and writes headlines on local and national political stories, and occasionally designs pages.

She acknowledged her error. We reprimanded her. We trust she will not do this again. We also trust she will continue to keep her personal views out of the judgments she makes about the news.

Fell's case differs from Hermanson's. We pay him to express his own opinion on matters of public interest through cartoons that appear on the editorial pages. He is not an employee but a freelancer who is covered by our ethics code. He did not see fit to tell us he had made a political contribution, either at the time he made it or when he was contacted by MSNBC.

The biggest difference, though, is the cavalier attitude about journalistic ethics Fell exhibited. He said he doesn't give "a rat's ass" about the policies of this paper. Read his complete comments to Dedman elsewhere on this page.

Fell's comments make it clear he does not care about guarding this newspaper's trust with readers. We don't think he should treat our credibility with such disdain. His comments to MSNBC follow an earlier incident in which he did not disclose to us that he had posted cartoons of a sexual nature on his Web site. He removed them after we expressed concern.

We have lost trust in our professional relationship with Paul Fell. For that reason, he no longer draws editorial cartoons for us.

This is no occasion for celebration, but the MSNBC report does present us with a good opportunity.

We are renewing efforts to make sure all newsroom staffers and freelancers know and understand the provisions of our ethics code. It's important.

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So what do you think?  Should journalists give money to political campaigns?  Does it matter if they are copy editors or cartoonists or reporters? 

We'd like to know your thoughts on our ethics code, too. See the link to it on this page.

You can join an online conversation about this issue in the comment section below.

Or send me a private comment at krutledge@journalstar.com.

Or send a letter that we will consider for publication as a letter to the editor.

Send it to oped@journalstar.com or Letters to the Editor, P.O. Box 81689, Lincoln, NE 68501. It must include your name, postal address and telephone numbers. We use this information to verify the letter and its author, but we don't print the address or telephone number.

We'd like to hear from you.