Examining competences in online journalism at Spanish Universities: The case of the Miguel Hernández University

Major changes in the workplace associated with the widespread use of online journalism, the consequences of news gathering in a digital environment and the ability to produce content for multimedia platforms are setting new goals in journalism education. One of the defining features of journalism university education is the requirement that students demonstrate their understanding of core skills by producing professional work. The identification of competencies constitutes one of the key dimensions in current Journalism education. This article examines the Online Journalism courses at the Miguel Hernández University (Spain), in order to analyse the competences acquired by the students. The methodology includes a multi-layered approach: on the one hand, we conducted interviews with over twenty media professionals who currently work in Spanish online media, to identify the skills that are most demanded. Their answers provided a working framework during the design and implementation of our research. We also carried out a survey with 250 students in their final years of the Grade in Journalism at the UMH, with the aim of exploring their adaptation to five specific courses: news writing, media production, online news design, digital communication and database management.