The relationship between editorial and advertising departments in the written press has always been under discussion. There have been incidents, in the past, where advertisers have tried to exert influence over editorial material. In the pursuit of avoiding this, the journalistic professional identity relies heavily on independency. There is something that distinguishes the difference between the department of advertising and the editorial office, a kind of "invisible wall", one might call it. The editorial part of a newspaper work with journalism, while the advertising department is working with finances, and, according to journalistic principles, the two should never meet.

In this study we have investigated the relationship between the advertising department and the editorial office of local newspapers in Sweden. We have done this by making use of qualitative interviews with respondents from these workplaces, and then analyzed their responses with a vertical and horizontal analysis method.

We could in our essay, to some extent, conclude that the "invisible wall" may well have changed in recent years. It was previously set in stone, in the form that the contact between the department of advertising and the editorial office was almost non-existent. Today it rather seems to be a question of smaller forms of cooperation. We came to the conclusion that the journalistic profession and the self-image seems to be somewhat unchanged, or at least similar, to what previous research have concluded. But the actual dialogue between the different departments have come to change a bit.