New Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lab

Step into media’s future

Could an augmented reality reporter provide a more personalized take on the news? Could a weather app make it appear that snow is accumulating in a user’s kitchen? Could a Cronkite grad build a startup that both fills a niche in the communications landscape and pays the bills?

The New Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lab teaches students how to imagine the possibilities of new methods of information delivery, shows them how to build it and gives them the skills and confidence to be leaders in innovation in their first jobs. NMIEL students have built a reporter bot, created augmented reality weather and launched startups that employed themselves and others. Students have built games and simulations that show users the challenges of recovering from opioid addiction or that test one’s tolerance for helping the homeless. Students have launched companies such as a virtual reality business that brought in revenue even before the owners got their degrees. They have landed jobs where their innovation expertise allowed them to move up quickly. Altogether, NMIEL students have created more than 50 games, apps and simulations, earned $150,000 in startup funding, and won a Pulitzer Prize in the process.

Communicating in the 21st century is more than writing and video production. How we tell stories is rapidly evolving, and new tools such as artificial intelligence give us better ways of giving information consumers new insights to the news that affects us all. Give NMIEL a semester, and it’ll give you the skills to become the innovation leader the media industry needs.

Alternatively, students may bring their own media entrepreneurship ideas to NMIEL, where they’ll work on it 16 hours a week. In addition to building their businesses, students continue to hone their startup pitches to compete for university, local and national funding. (All startup ideas must be pre-approved by the director prior to NMIEL admissions.)

What will you create?

Faculty