If you want to succeed in journalism, you need to select topics carefully, research thoroughly, interview intelligently, and use adverbs sparingly. Or you can write about sex.

It doesn’t matter what you say about it. “The sex was a vapid, purple, pistachioed umbrella,” you can write, and yours will be the most-read story on your publication’s Web site. You might even win a Pulitzer. If the Wall Street Journal followed Cosmopolitan Magazine’s lead and ran more stories like “50 tips to please Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke in bed,” they could finally afford real photographs instead of those silly doodles.

So to increase my marketability, today I become the Sex Column Answer Man, filling you in on details with all the nuance and accuracy you’d expect from someone whose acronym is “SCAM.”

Question: What does it mean to “hook up?”

Answer: Could mean sex, could mean nothing. When a girl you like tells you she’s “hooking up” with some guy from biology class, it’s sex. When your best friend tells you he “hooked up” with a cheerleader at a party last night, it means he held her beer for 30 minutes while she was hooking up in his bedroom with someone else.

Q: Speaking of “hooking up,” my mom recently asked me what it means, but I don’t want to tell her. How should I handle this?

A: Tell her to wash and hook up your laundry.

Q: Are women’s magazines good sources of information on what men are thinking?

A: No. Although their information can seem solid at first, they have a tendency to be dead wrong. Here’s a recent example that I saw online: An article in Cosmo encouraged women to win their man’s love by “blowing him off.” It turned out they meant to cancel plans at the last minute.

Q: Any other inaccuracies in Cosmo?

A: They wrote that the male g-spot is actually the prostate, a “walnut-shaped gland.” The only walnut-shaped gland on a man is his brain, and he does not use it during sex.

Q: What’s this I hear about a condom company offering an endorsement deal to a major celebrity?

A: The celebrity is 15-year-old Miley Cyrus, star of Disney’s “Hannah Montana” and avowed member of the waiting-for-marriage crowd.

Q: Is she going to do it?

A: Cyrus’s representatives said the starlet wouldn’t accept the deal, but the condom company offered her a lifetime supply when she turns 18. At that time she may be ready to shed the “Hannah Montana” moniker for something more adult-themed, such as Whoregon Oregon, Horny Californey, or Unplanned Pregnancy Nebraska.

Q: I’m having a hard time finding a partner. When will technology let me do it with a robot?

A: The year 2050, according to artificial intelligence expert David Levy in his new book “Love and Sex With Robots.” Levy says that by then robots will be so lifelike they will be able to handle all the things a real lover would, including sex, cuddling, arguments over where to have dinner and fart denial.

Q: What other amazing, futuristic talents will these sex robots have?

A: They will know more than 8,000 ways to please Ben Bernanke in bed.

Scott is a third-year law student. Sex sex sex sex sex sex sex.