The weighting of journalistic competences from the perspective of students

Description

1 Initial position
At the AGM in 2006 in Estonia the EJTA European Journalism Training Association has developed the Tartu-declaration. In the declaration ten main journalistic competences each with five journalistic qualifications are set out. Although all of these 50 qualifications are of great importance, new trends and developments within journalism and a lack of resources journalism schools are forced to decide on which parts of the competence profile they lay their main focus in their education. How important the EJTA members (mostly heads of journalism schools) weight the different competences was explored in a first pre-study. In a next step was investigated how professional key persons across 20 European countries weight the different elements of the EJTA Competence Profile.
2 Goal of the survey
The main goal of the third phase of the Competence Research Project was to find out how students and teachers from different European countries weight the importance of the ten main competences respectively the fifty qualifications and how they believe current and future developments in journalism will affect the relative weight of each of these elements in the coming ten years.
3 Method
The questionnaire that was designed for the second phase was used again. To spread the link to the online-questionnaire a contact person (EJTA-member) for each participating country was designated. The contact persons selected the respondents (150 students and 50 teachers from each country) to whom the link to the questionnaire was forwarded.
The outcomes of the EJTA Competence Research Project were summarized in a research report (commented tables) which is available for all EJTA members. The headlines were presented at the AGM of EJTA in London in May 2011.

Key data