Homespun to Hard-news

As the longest-running Vietnamese newspaper in the United States, the Nguoi Viet Daily News keeps immigrants connected to their native country and serves as a guide to American life.

By Lydia Lum

During his career as the publisher of a Vietnamese newspaper, Yen Do would frequently buy articles from writers even if he never intended to use them. Why? Because he knew how badly they needed the income. For that reason, Yen would sometimes pay a triple fee to freelance writers. And for the same reason, he typically wouldn’t fire the occasional incompetent employee.

Yet today, more than a quarter century after Do founded his newspaper, it continues to thrive. In fact, it is growing at a time when many national mainstream newspapers are bemoaning declining subscription numbers. With a daily circulation of more than 17,000, the California-based Nguoi Viet Daily News is the longest-running Vietnamese newspaper in the country. Nguoi Viet has a staff of 50 and is distributed as far as Australia, France and Russia.

Nguoi Viet, which means “Vietnamese people,” offers primarily political and economic news out of Vietnam and Asia. The 60-page paper also includes news from various villages in Vietnam, written by a network of correspondents groomed by Yen and others. Like its ethnic press counterparts, Nguoi Viet offers news not provided by mainstream media outlets. It also includes a section in English once a week, edited by his 39-year-old daughter Anh Do. The section is aimed at a generation that is largely American-born or, like Anh, immigrated when they were young. Loan Do, Yen’s wife, oversees classified advertising.

A war correspondent in Vietnam for U.S. dailies, Yen fled the country with his wife and children close to the April 1975 fall of Saigon.
In an oral history published in 2003, Yen described his life’s work as
“a calling.”