Ariel Rothfield (left) and Maggie Love take the anchor chairs at Chicago CBS affiliate WBBM's studios.

Lily Altavena reads The New York Times in Fisk Hall.

Ariel Rothfield, of Weston, Fla., said she couldn’t contain her emotion when she walked into Northwestern University’s John J. Louis Hall to begin an afternoon lab on broadcast journalism at the National High School Institute.

Although this was her second time being in front of the camera as a cherub, this time was special. She was going to produce and record a real newscast from scratch.

“I was a bit nervous but excited at the same time,” she said.

As soon as she saw the news desk, Rothfield said her excitement really got out of control.

“I couldn’t stop smiling,” she said. “I just couldn’t wait to go read from the teleprompter.”

Rothfield was assigned a story on higher prices on McDonald’s “dollar menu.” She wrote her story and typed it onto the teleprompter. There was only one thing left to do: record.

Stage lights beamed on her face as cameraman Jeffery Cattel, of Canton, Mass., counted down to action. Rothfield looked into the camera and delivered her lede.

“Looks like McDonald’s Happy Meals won’t make customers happy anymore,” she said.

Rothfield is one of several cherubs who came to the journalism program at the National High School Institute to explore, and possibly confirm, their interest in journalism careers.

Although the program gives time for cherubs to learn print, broadcast and new media techniques, many cherubs like Rothfield have already decided on the route they want their future to take.

Rothfield has dreamed of working in broadcast journalism since she was 6 years old, after watching a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV. There, her admiration of Katie Couric, former anchor of "The Today Show," began.

“She was so charismatic,” Rothfield said. “She captured my heart.”

Rothfield said her broadcast experience at the cherub program has only confirmed her aspirations.

Lily Altavena, of Scottsdale, Ariz., said she’s only interested in a journalism career in print.

“I’m a thousand percent sure I want to go into print,” she said. “I love newspapers. I love reading them. I even love the smell.”

Atavena said the cherub program helped prepare her for how the changing market of print journalism will affect her aspirations. She said new media will be good for readers and journalists alike.

“Once we get on that change, we’re going to deal with it,” she said. “There will be more openings for jobs through Web sites.”

Altavena said her goal is to become a foreign correspondent for a newspaper and work in the Middle East.

“I want to change people’s viewpoints about the Middle East and overseas in general,” she said.

Rothfield said she hopes to inspire people to watch the news, much like her family has been compelled to watch the 5 o’clock news together every evening.

“I want to inform people about what’s going on,” she said. “When news is on the TV, it brings people and families together and I’m all about family values.”

Lucy Jackson, of Los Angeles, said she isn’t set on a specific career in journalism. Instead, she wants to take what she has learned at cherubs and apply it to another career.

“Journalism interested me, but I wasn’t set on it as a career path,” she said. “Being here taught me that that was okay. I loved what I learned and I think it’s valuable for other fields as well. After listening to different speakers talk about how they’ve applied journalism in alternate ways, I realized that there were a lot of things I could do with my life that involved skills I learned here, but that weren’t directly linked to journalism.”

April Daley, a community associate for this year’s program and a cherub two years ago, said students should be open to options in journalism in case they find something else they’re interested in.

“Don’t limit yourself,” she said. “It’s good to have direction, but when you do that, you close yourself off to other things.”

Still, Rothfield is committed to her dream of becoming a broadcast journalist. She said that the nervousness she felt before the broadcast vanished when she got on camera.

“Broadcast labs really confirmed my dreams,” she said. “This is what I’m going to do with my life.”