Creating an amateur press corps of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to cover breaking science and improve lay-writing skills

The Science Writing Initiative for Trainees is a science communications internship program for biomedical graduate students and postdoctoral fellows at the Medical University of South Carolina. Interns serve as an amateur press corps, writing news stories and press releases about recent high-impact research articles. Since 2016, 25 interns have written more than 100 EurekAlert! press releases that have received more than a half million views. Interns learn to explain science across the translational spectrum and to convey findings in plain language to a lay audience, serving as ambassadors for science.