Three editors at the Iowa State Daily were fired Sunday as a result of a picture in last week’s issue of the cartoon newspaper Toons.

Sara Tennessen, Wendy Weiskircher and Valerie Dennis, all editors at the Daily, posed for a picture in the Feb. 6 issue of Toons under the title of “More Nice Girls at ISU.”

The advertisement included a section that said the editors worked at the Daily, and that Tennessen, university editor, was in charge of “obscenities and slander;” Weiskircher, news editor, of “libel and maliciousness;” and Dennis, a copy editor, of “tomfoolery and fiction.”

Andrea Hauser, editor in chief of the Daily, said she first heard of the advertisement when she saw it on Thursday. She said their depiction in Toons could harm the integrity of the Daily.

It also compromised their ability to work effectively as Daily staff members within the organization and with the public, Hauser said.

“I trust the Daily staff to be up front everyday with information they present and how they represent the paper, and that’s something I have to take seriously,” Hauser said. “This was not an easy decision.

“Whether or not our readers believe that [the Toons advertisement] is the truth, it does reflect on the Daily in a negative way, and it is directly attributed to them [the editors]. There’s nothing in there saying `this is a joke’ or `this is directly what they said.’ And to anyone who’s just reading that, it would affect their perception of the paper,” she said.

Hauser said she consulted several journalism and mass communications faculty members before making a decision.

“The Daily doesn’t have a set policy in a situation like this. It’s a personnel issue, and since I’m the person who manages the editorial personnel, it was solely my responsibility and my decision,” Hauser said.

All three editors said they were shocked when Hauser called them into the Daily office Sunday morning.

“I hadn’t heard a word from anyone at the Daily about it being upsetting,” said Tennessen, senior in journalism and mass communication. “I wish we could have been told there were concerns before this happened.”

Dennis said it wasn’t something she expected either.

“I was really surprised. I didn’t know anything was wrong or anything was coming,” said Dennis, junior in journalism and mass communication. “When people read Toons, they really realized that it’s elaborated.”

Richard Lem, general manager of Toons since its inception in 1987, said that there is no official policy about attribution at the cartoon newspaper.

“I write most of the stuff myself at two or three in the morning, desperately searching for something that makes people laugh,” Lem said. “I try to make it outrageous and silly enough that nobody’s going to believe it. I never dreamed that anybody would take this seriously.”

Lem, who took the picture and wrote the article for the Toons advertisement featuring the Daily editors, said that he asked for some “silly poses” and asked if he could write a bio of the editors.

“They did come up with the editor jobs, but we were laughing and joking and having fun,” Lem said.

Weiskircher, junior in journalism and mass communication, said she and the other editors told Lem that they were editors at the Daily, they enjoyed their jobs and they were “classic Midwestern girls.”

“We never mentioned advertising, and everything else he wrote was crazy and outrageous,” Weiskircher said. “We called the ad staff [at the Daily] to apologize and let them know how much we appreciate their work at the Daily.”

“We realize that it was a mistake, and apologized,” Weiskircher added.

The Daily’s advertising managers, Mike Stitt and Lawrence Cunningham, couldn’t be reached for comment.

Tennessen said she and the other editors will appeal to the publication board at the Daily to get their jobs back.

“We have worked here since day one of our freshman years, and we want the best for the Daily. We didn’t mean to do anything wrong,” Dennis said.

Mark Witherspoon, adviser to the Iowa State Daily, declined to comment.