Students at Avonworth High School put together their first-ever newscast, and they had a familiar face from Pittsburgh television helping them do it. Erica Mokay, a reporter and anchor at KDKA-TV, worked with the students at the Allegheny County school to guide them through the process of producing a broadcast news segment.
The collaboration was detailed in a video report from CBS News Pittsburgh, which covers Mokay's visit to the school. Mokay has worked as a reporter for KDKA-TV since October 2022, when she returned to her hometown television market after more than a decade of broadcast reporting experience in Steubenville, Ohio, and Kalamazoo, Michigan, according to the Pittsburgh Union Progress. She grew up in Westmoreland County, where she took part in student media and morning announcements before earning a degree in television journalism from West Virginia University, per the same outlet.
Mokay's own path into the newsroom included covering some of the biggest stories in the region in recent years. She earned a regional Emmy nomination for reporting that covered the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine rollout in West Michigan, the East Palestine train derailment, and the Michigan State University campus shooting, according to her professional biography. Before her return to Pittsburgh, she spent five years at WTOV-9 in Ohio and worked as a primetime anchor at WWMT-TV in Michigan.
A School Serving Five Allegheny County Communities
Avonworth High School sits at 304 Josephs Lane and enrolls roughly 530 to 580 students across grades 9 through 12, according to SchoolDigger figures. The school maintains a student-to-teacher ratio of approximately 11 to 1 within the suburban Pittsburgh region, the same data shows.
The Avonworth School District, which the high school serves, spans an 11-square-mile territory in northern Allegheny County. It covers five municipalities — the boroughs of Ben Avon, Ben Avon Heights, and Emsworth, along with Kilbuck Township and Ohio Township — for a combined population of more than 12,000 suburban residents, according to Wikipedia.
A Station With Deep Pittsburgh Roots
KDKA-TV, the station where Mokay works, carries significant history in Western Pennsylvania broadcasting. The station originally launched on January 11, 1949, as WDTV, becoming Pittsburgh's first commercial television station before adopting the KDKA-TV call sign in 1955 under Westinghouse ownership, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. KDKA-TV marked its 75th anniversary on air in January 2024 as a CBS-owned-and-operated station.
Mokay's own team has drawn recent recognition as well. KDKA-TV's morning news broadcast team, which includes Mokay alongside anchors John Shumway and Lindsay Ward, earned a Mid-Atlantic Emmy Award nomination for Best Morning Newscast, a nod that highlights the station's standing in Pittsburgh's morning local news market.
Existing Pathways Into Student Media
Avonworth students who want to pursue media training already have some regional options beyond a single mentoring visit. Point Park University's Center for Media Innovation in Downtown Pittsburgh regularly hosts high school journalism workshops and Media Days that engage local schools, including Avonworth High School, in hands-on broadcast reporting and media production training. The university's School of Communication frequently connects Western Pennsylvania high school students with local media professionals.
Students seeking more specialized vocational instruction can also turn to the A.W. Beattie Career Center, a joint vocational center serving nine northern Allegheny County school districts. The career center awards industry certifications and elective credits to students in grades 10 through 12, according to Avonworth High School. Whether Avonworth will build on Mokay's visit with a permanent broadcast journalism class or a student-run news channel remains to be seen.
