, Associate Professor
Office phone: (406) 243-2577

photo by Teresa Tamura

In almost 20 years in the newspaper business, Sheri Venema’s beats have ranged from submarines to chickens.

Now an associate professor at the UM School of Journalism, Venema started her newspaper career at the Norwich Bulletin in Connecticut, where she covered the U.S. Navy submarine base. She later covered county government for the now-defunct Baltimore News-American and worked for six years as a reporter and editor at the Hartford Courant. The chicken beat — her favorite — was at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in the late 1990s.

She taught at the School of Journalism as an adjunct from 1992-1995, and returned in the fall of 1999. She teaches editing and reporting classes, Online News, and Media and Cultures.

In the summer of 2003, Venema worked as a reporter at the Oregonian in Portland on a fellowship from the American Society of Newspaper Editors. She is now at work on a book about the Church Universal and Triumphant in Montana's Paradise Valley.

Her undergraduate degree (English) is from Calvin College in Michigan; she earned an M.A. in journalism from the University of Minnesota.

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