It actually may be too late to adapt for the future if the future is already here. I think journalism advisers need to change now or actually yesterday, even if it's uncomfortable. It almost comes to down to a generational issue. The students we teach are growing up in a generation where "true journalism" could be fading away as social media continues to grow. Personally, I think professional journalism and social media should be separate. Professional journalism should be where you receive your news and social media should be a place to keep up with what your friends are doing. However, this is not the case and it does make me angry. You can't really blame anyone. You just need to adapt. Journalists have always adapted and they must do so now.
When beginning to teach new student journalists I think it would help to start by asking them where do they get their news and the discuss the validity of those sources. As educators, we cannot teach the basic fundamentals of journalism and pretend that social media is not having an impact on the field. You also need to be careful not to insult social media and not make your feelings known that traditional journalism is more fundamentally sound. The bottom line is you must first teach the basic parts of journalism then figure out the medium that will be used to communicate the information. Too often it's the other way around. Students know how to use the medium, but they don't know how to report the information correctly.
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