Middle school’s Career Seminar welcomes CBS3 reporter

About 60 seventh- and eighth-grade students at Ben Franklin Middle School participated in a Career Seminar with Nikki DeMentri, a general assignment reporter at CBS3 News Philadelphia. DeMentri was one of the ten Career Seminars held this year.

“I wanted to expose the students to a wide variety of careers,” said Kasey Kenworthy, school counselor, who plans and organizes the seminars. “This is part of our College and Career Readiness, and it’s not just college-based careers, but the trades, too.”

DeMentri’s seminar was one of the fastest that students have signed up for. “All the slots were filled within two hours of the Google Form going out,” said Kenworthy.

DeMentri, a New Jersey native, graduated from Syracuse University, and worked in the Buffalo and Indianapolis markets before joining CBS3 News Philadelphia. She gave an interactive presentation about what it’s like to work as a reporter and the behind-the-scenes of her day-to-day.

Although viewers can catch her reporting on-screen, DeMentri juggles multiple roles, including research, writing, filming B-roll, tracking and editing, and interviewing. She showed students a few of her segments on CBS3 and passed around equipment for them to see. In addition to her job as a multimedia journalist, DeMentri spoke about the other roles in the newsroom, including producers, writers, the web team, assignment desk, and photojournalists.

After the presentation, students asked questions, and DeMentri visited the Franklin News Network studio, spending time with the students there.

Over the past two school years, Kenworthy has organized about 20 Career Seminars. Past speakers include a plumber, fire chief, respiratory therapist and even an American Idol contestant.