Science Journalism Mentoship Program : Fostering Minds, Forging Science Storytellers

-TUHIN SAJJAD SK

Our’s in an age when time is measured by nano, micro and milliseconds; not only that, every second births and buries billions of bits of data. As a result of it, quite harsh, but it’s true that truth often suffocates under waves of misinformations and disinformations. As such fake news spreads faster than facts, science communication becomes the need of the hour.

Science communication stands as an indispensable bridge between rigorous evidence and public understanding. It’s a shield against distortion and a torch for truth. Productive science communication is vital for nurturing a fruitful, mutually beneficial relationship between scientific and general community. It converts what could be a far off, tiered dynamic into one of trust, dialogue, and shared purpose.

Nowadays Scicomm seems to be crucial amid ongoing challenges like policy skepticism, fake news surges, and global crises demanding evidence-based collective action. By prioritizing clarity, transparency, empathy, and relevance over jargon-laden monologues, scientists socialize their research, demonstrate integrity and benevolence, acknowledge uncertainties, and actively listen to the public feedbacks.

Exercising such skilled mass communication and encouraging openness builds multidimensional trust. This bidirectional engagement curates informed citizenship, empowers commoners to co-shape research priorities. This ensures science addresses local issues regarding their needs in climate, health, and technology. Scicomm counters polarization by connecting evidence to shared values and enhances societal outcomes. This method popularizes science and concretizes better public understanding of science, so that public engagement of science could be huge and impactful.

Under this circumstances, structured mentorship and training in science communication are very decisive for the present generation of scientists, researchers, students, young professionals, and particularly for the early-career journalists. Such guidance will equip this digitally native cohort with necessary tools to thrive amid accelerating misinformation, fractured trust in institutions, and rapid societal impacts from technologies like AI, gene editing, and climate interventions. In 2026, when public discourse is dominated by social media echo chambers and polarized debates, any formal training and mentorship program sets up confidence in translating complex findings into clear, empathetic narratives, countering the traditional academic focus on jargon-heavy outputs that alienate non-experts.

In global south, access to such structured training, mentorship, and fellowship program is limited compared to opportunities available in global north. Here, the mentorship program organised by the Nepal Forum of Science Journalists (NFSJ) is really a pathfinder in this field. This program really shows the way to the curious minds of southeast Asia. Where many journalists learn science communication informally, leading to uneven quality in reporting and confidence gap when dealing with complex topics. Program by NFSJ is disciplined formally to shun scicomm skills of a mixed cohort from Nepal, Bhutan, India, Bangladesh, Srilanka and Pakistan.

Ten hours well-equipped program by NFSJ, spanning over three months, we’ve gone through several important sessions regarding modern-day trends and tips in science writing and journalism. In the very first session, distinguished science Journalist and editor from Egypt, Bothina Osama shared her worthy instincts over basics of science writing. In a session, the president of the World Federation of Science Journalists, Ben Deighton taught us how to find science. He trained us to get skilled over shaping ideas and identifying the science in stories. We’ve learnt how to hook the readers and how to sum up the issue with a powerful ‘Golden Quote’.

Subhra Priyadarshini, Chief Editor of Nature India shared insights on how to have our own journalistic voice amidst a tsunami of Artificial Intelligence(AI) generated contents. She expressed her concerns, that we’re losing the human touch in writing. We’re facing loss of beauty in reading as of the formulaic AI content dilutes the craft and pleasure of storytelling. Exaggerated or manipulated images, visuals made by AI create the erosion of authenticity. But it’s fact that having natural nuances is a pure sign of originality. Learnt a lesson, we want AI work for us, rather than we work for AI. She encouraged us to have our own voice while writing and asked to practice a simple equation to guard authenticity. VOICE is a sum of IDENTITY, PERSPECTIVE, and TRUST. We should serve our voice to the audience.

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Deborah Blum shared some excellent tips on crafting a compelling pitch to international editors, in a session. She shows techniques how to sell our stories. She exchanged her way of doing reasearch while pitching and crafting. In another session, Australian science communicator Andrew Wight offered pathways on how to source news stories while crafting a compelling pitch. He showed us real-time example of successful pitches.

Another multi-award winning Australian science Journalist Jackson W. Ryan in a session made our learning more effective by informing the ‘Story Craft Rules’. He taught us, how to give an inspiring, insightful, new, unique, surprising but holistic look at a topic. He said, deep reasearch is always heart is a story. Also he warned that Everything is Content! Once Randy Olson said, scientists are poor storytellers. He said, “if scientists are poor storytellers it’s because they haven’t been given the tools to succeed.” His way of mentoring was truly inspiring for us to shape our curiosity into reality.

There’re numbers of challenges faced by early career journalists, and researchers in the global south. Due to limited institutional support, usually there’s no sufficient dedicated science desks in most of the media houses. There’s a lack of trained editors with scientific reporting, as a result of it, it seems difficult to sustain a scicomm career. If there’s a post, it enjoys low pay, freelance based, contractual and short-term. Job insecurity sustains always. At this point, the mentorship program by NFSJ is well-organized to serve expert training on science communication. It shows some effective orientations to get published in the internationally recognised platforms and ways to secure a job of science writing.
This program, designed as a cohort mentorship intiative for southeast Asian countries, seeks to strengthen emerging science communicators and amplify their influence throughout the world. Such guidance can convert curiosity into clarity and creativity into communication. During this program, few of us had opportunity to be a part of Science Journalism Forum 2025, a global dialogue where ideas and insights travel faster than borders, held in Dubai. It’s truly an amazing experience to share our views on this course. Those sessions cultivates young minds to become confident science storytellers who translate complex ideas into human narratives. By bridging laboratories and communities, it strengthens scientific temper and builds a vital connection between science and society through guidance, dialogue and shared purpose.

(Tuhin Sajjad SK is an Independent science Journalist from India, and Journalist Fellow of the Mentorship Program.)