In the article it has been grounded content of the formation of prospective philologists’ German language competence in reading publicistic texts with the use of the learning platform Moodle. The analysis of the program, results of the survey of students and teachers of three Ukrainian higher educational institutions showed the reasonability of focusing on third year students as such ready to comprehend authentic publicistic texts. Purposes of forming prospective philologists’ German language competence in reading publicistic texts determine the content. Practical, developmental, educational, teaching and professionally oriented purposes have been determined in the article. It is proved that German language competence in reading publicistic texts should include media literacy, which is defined as the ability to use search engines and catalogues, web pages of Moodle, assess publicistic texts, present own materials developed on their basis, analyse critically publicistic texts of mass media, select them according to the purpose. Declarative and procedural aspects of content have been determined within which speech, linguosociocultural, linguistic, learning components have been clarified. Declarative aspect includes educational-professional as well as social and political spheres of communication, situations of professional communication in which the information from publicistic texts can be applied, topics (determined by the program), texts (newspaper articles); linguosociocultural material (background material, equivalent vocabulary, nonequivalent vocabulary, clichés, phraseological units etc.); most difficult for students grammar material, lexical material; learning (metacognitive, cognitive) strategies, strategies of using the German language in reading, communicative strategies, strategies of publicistic texts selection and critical analysis. Within the procedural aspect the skills of scanning, skimming and critical reading of publicistic texts have been clarified. The procedural aspect also includes lexical, grammatical skills, linguosociocultural skills, abilities to use the determined strategies, corresponding knowledge and exercises to develop all the above mentioned skills. Further investigations should focus on the problem of the determined content implementation while forming prospective philologists’ German language competence in reading publicistic texts.