Abstract:

Since its birth, the science of communication has had great responsibilities in its hands. In each historical stage it has played roles as informer, opinion leader, producer of cultural goods, translator or interpreter, among others.

The accelerated technological progress in communication and the intimate relationship of the field of communication with the social space and other fields such as politics, economics and culture, have forced communicologists and communicators to constantly reflect on their professional practice, as well as on the processes of production and distribution of symbolic goods. This has reconfigured the borders of the field of communication and necessarily happens the same with the curricula, its curricular design and the pedagogical practices developed in the schools of communication in Mexico and the world.

In the case of Mexico, the curricula of university degrees in communication, from their origins in the 1960s to date, have widely diversified the areas of knowledge in the training of their students (in organizations, politics, education, science, advertising, media production, etc.), blurring the role of journalism as the foundation of the communicator's education. This paper argues that journalism should be a transversal axis in the curricula of the university education of communicators due to the different knowledge and skills involved, regardless of whether it is professionally oriented towards other areas of communication.

Based on the finite population of one thousand institutions of higher education in Mexico that offer a degree in Communication, a simple random sampling was carried out which resulted in 40 Mexican IES: 20 federal and state public institutions and 20 private institutions. Of these 40 curricula, a curricular analysis was carried out based on the proposed training areas of journalism: an articulation of knowledge on politics and power, production processes, media production, cultural studies, research and information and communication technologies, in addition to written expression.

Among the main results, it is observed that journalism education is considered an autonomous area of knowledge, with its own rules and forms of operation, mainly limited to the teaching of journalistic genres. In general terms, it is concluded that the contents of the curricula do not emphasize relations with the political, economic and cultural fields based on communication theories or research methodologies, for example.

Curricular analysis is an area of knowledge that is important to promote in the curricular design of Communication degrees, in such a way that the articulation between different types of knowledge and how they are presented in journalism is carefully worked out. It is important to resize journalism education in the training of communicators, since journalism, besides being the starting point of communication studies, is today a necessary field to understand the dynamics between agents, organizations, power relations, economic activity, and cultural dynamics in a global society deeply marked by digital technologies.

Keywords:

Journalism, professional training, curricular analysis.