The ArrayList of Beans That I Created Is A Null

Question

I have a bean. The bean has only one property. I populate the bean from fetching data from the database. Because more than one record should be picked up from the database (the data table is created by me, there should be a number of records to be picked up), I add bean(s) to an ArrayList. Unfortunately, the computer tells me that this ArrayList is a null.
Let me go step by step:
1. in my action class:
String userrole = "editor";
String category = "literature";
EditorService service = new EditorService();
Collection editors = service.getEditors( userrole, category );2. in my business logic class EditorService, I have:
   EditorDAO ed = new MySQLEditorDAO();
   public Collection getEditors( String userrole,
String category )
      return ed.findEditors( userrole, category );
   }3. in my data access class, I have:
public class MySQLEditorDAO implements EditorDAO
   public Collection findEditors( String userrole,
String category )
       throws EditorDAOSysException
      EditorBean editorBean;
      ArrayList editors = new ArrayList();
      try
         conn = DBConnection.getDBConnection();
         stmt = conn.createStatement();
         String query = "SELECT user_name FROM members
WHERE user_role = '" + userrole + "' AND
journal_category = '" + category + "'";  
         rs = stmt.executeQuery( query );
      while( rs.next() )
         editorBean = new EditorBean(
rs.getString("user_name") );
         editors.add( editorBean );
         return editors;
}4. my EditorBean is:
public class EditorBean
   private String name;
   public EditorBean() {}
   public EditorBean( String name )
      setName( name );
   public String getName() {
      return name;
   public void setName( String name ) {
      this.name = name;
}

Answer 1

The code you have here looks fine.
Given that you have initialised the return value with new ArrayList(), it should never be null - maybe empty, but never null.
I can't see any exception handling code, so I don't know what you are doing if an exception occurs - ignoring it? throwing a different exception? Are there any other return statements from the DAO method?
Where exactly do you get the error message ArrayList is null?