by Robert Niles

Why should journalists care about the scientific method? I suggested in my post last week that journalism students should take a lab science class to learn about the scientific method. Here's why I think that's so important to journalists today.

The scientific method provides a standard procedure through which scientists gather, test and share information. Obviously, part of that should sound familiar because gathering and sharing information is what journalists do, too.

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For many journalists there's something halting to the phrase, let alone the idea, of an "advertorial publication." After all, advertorials are something of a boogeyman (but a boogeyman with a checkbook, which is nice) in the straight-journalism world, products that look, walk, and talk like news content -- but that are, in reality, advertising. They play into all the deep-seated feelings journalists generally don't like to acknowledge about how the bills are paid and about the tricky relationship between advertising and news.

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Let's face some facts: Media companies aren't entirely sure what to do with the new crop of news reading apps that are springing up at the moment. Technology like Flipboard, Zite, or Pulse could either be a thief, a new revenue stream, or an inexpensive test bed for finding new ways to get your content in front of people. For the moment, these deals, if they are drawn up between a publisher and an app maker, typically get thrown into the category of "partnerships," like the kind of reading app Pulse has been brokering with media companies like CNN, the Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, Time, and MSNBC.

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