Yolo Local

Exploring a Civic Information Hub for Yolo County

By Autumn Labbé-Renault, Executive Director, Davis Media Access

Update October 2024: DMA has secured seed money from the City of Davis, Yolo Couty Supervisor District 2 Lucas Frerichs, and Yolo County Supervisor District 4 Jim Provenza. We will leverage that to secure the rest of the funding needed to conduct a countywide community information needs assessment. We anticipate both tasks will be carried out this fall and winter.

Also--the poject is now officially called Yolo Local.

Statement of Purpose - Yolo Local

In the void left by shrinking news coverage in Yolo County, Davis Media Access (DMA) is working to build a civic information project for Davis and beyond. We’ve named this project Yolo Local.

We believe the shrinking of local newsrooms and corresponding loss of vital news and information affects every aspect of community life. When information is scarce or inequitable, civic engagement is diminished and our communities suffer.

Concept Paper: Community Media Meets Public Service Journalism

Community Media Meets Public Service Journalism
Creating a Civic Information Hub for Yolo County
By Autumn Labbé-Renault, Executive Director, Davis Media Access
Updated April 2024

This is a vision for a project that seeks to bring together an award-winning noncommercial community
media center in Davis, CA with other local news and culture resources, including student-run newspapers
and podcasts; a community arts/culture/entertainment newspaper, and a once-robust local newspaper—
all in the service of a community and its citizens’ information needs.

Generally, this would be a new source of community and civic information about Davis/Yolo, drawing on
the strengths and needs of people in the community, and available to all. We don't see this as a
commercial venture; we do see it as a supplement to existing local sources of information. How this
would work or function, or how it would be funded, are questions we hope to answer through our
exploration phase, but we envision a three-year runway to get the project up and running in Davis in Year
1, with expansion to covering other important news in Yolo County beginning in Year 2.

Project Principals

Autumn Labbé-Renault (she/her) began her career as a newspaper reporter and editor; worked in development and public affairs/policy for Planned Parenthood, and has spent the past 20+ years using media tools to build capacity and community in Yolo County. She’s served as DMA’s ED since 2007.