Staff Directory

Barbara K. Laskin
Media Relations Manager
651-696-6451
laskin@macalester.edu
10 a.m. - 6 p.m.

I work on developing relationships with local and national media, pitching story ideas and responding to their inquiries which often means setting up interviews with the appropriate professor or administrator. I helped develop and maintain Mac Sources, an online database which media can access when looking for faculty/staff experts on a variety of subjects. I write press releases and media alerts and send out a monthly calendar to over 80 media outlets in the metro area.

When faculty, staff and students plan a campus event, I help with the publicity through calendar information, media alerts, press releases and follow up phone calls.

About Me
I spent over seven years in television and radio as a reporter/anchor in Minnesota and Vermont before I went in to public relations. In Washington, D.C., I was Sen. Frank Lautenberg s (D-N.J.) first deputy press secretary, and worked in media and public relations at The Catholic University of America and the Girl Scout Council of the Nation's Capital, the nation's largest council. I moved back to Minnesota in 1990 and worked at Hamline University for 10 years as the media relations director and was the public relations manager at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts from 2001 2003. Over the years I've developed a specialty in crisis communications. I graduated from the University of Minnesota with a B.A. in speech communications having spent my first two years at the University of Texas in Austin. I'm a musician, golfer and an avid antiques collector. I share a house with my two favorite collies, Satchel and Macintosh.

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