The Vietnamese Newsroom That Shaped Little Saigon

Welcome to the very first post of My Favorite Asian Story! A newsletter where I ask people to share their favorite story about Asian American history and why they love it. I’m so excited to bring you this story from Katelyn Do, a recent USC journalism grad soon heading to UCLA’s ethnic studies graduate program. Her enthusiasm and commitment to telling her community’s stories is infectious and a delight. Every time I see Katelyn, I learn something new. Enjoy!

Tiên Nguyễn: What is your favorite story to tell about Asian American history?

Katelyn Do: So one of my favorite Asian American history stories to tell is the formation of the Người Việt daily newspaper in what we now know as Little Saigon in Orange County, California. As a Vietnamese American and as someone who studies journalism, I'm really interested in newspapers and newsrooms, but I think what a lot of people don't know is without the formation of this newspaper Little Saigon as we know it wouldn't exist today in my opinion.

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I think it was so integral in the formation of this ethnic enclave that so many people come to visit to learn more about Vietnamese culture, Vietnamese food, just all of it. And it was all made possible by this journalist. His name is Yen Do. His daughter now works at the L.A. Times.

In 1975 after Saigon fell, there was a mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese immigrants into America. And if you think about it, it's people who don't speak the language, people who don't know the culture, and a lot of refugees who just experienced horrific warfare.

And Yen Do, with the help of his friends, cared so much about his community that he decided to start his own newspaper–a newspaper that would update people on what was going on back in Vietnam, which could be hard to get news of considering the political relationship between the U.S. and Vietnam. So through the labor of collecting different letters families were receiving and compiling it, and then writing out stories, they were able to keep the local communities informed of everything that was going on back home. This started originally in San Diego but once he moved up to Orange County–because there was already kind of a larger population of Vietnamese people like settling there–I think it really kind of started to form this identity of Vietnamese Americans.

A huge thing that I think helped really set the foundation of the community is just the community-based programming. They would publish things like how much a kilo of rice would cost in Vietnam so that families could gauge how much money to send back in remittances for their families in Vietnam. Or they would publish things on how to get a driver's license, how to vote, and kind of just navigating daily life in a new country in a language that these people spoke, you know, because it's hard enough being immigrants, it's hard enough having just suffered through war.

So it was a really great way to help bring people together and give people a semblance of what their old life was and a sense of community. This is a story of real resilience. Just building and determination and love for the community.

Tiên: I love this story! As someone who grew up in North Carolina, I’d never heard of this newspaper. What drew you to this particular story?

Katelyn: Being a journalism student, I just love learning about journalists in general. And I think journalism is largely a very, like, thankless job. And especially in recent years when I started to take reporting more seriously, just the amount of labor that goes into being a journalist and informing your community is sometimes mind-boggling.

And just to see, like examples of it within my own community, with Vietnamese journalists, because I think you don't really see Vietnamese journalists growing up. I didn't grow up in California either. I grew up in Colorado, and I remember when I told my dad I wanted to go to school for journalism, he was like, have you ever even seen an Asian journalist on TV? I don't think so. And I was like, Julie Chen!

And for me, it was important right now because of the dwindling of local newsrooms. At the same time, I feel like nonprofit newsrooms and smaller newsrooms are kind of getting a resurgence. People are starting to see a little bit more of the importance of having local media now that they're dying out and we're in a misinformation and disinformation crisis and nobody trusts any journalists anymore.

But the story I think is just interesting because it's like they really started from nothing, straight after the war. There were no roots established yet, and yet they were able to create a city that like everybody knows and loves today, so famous for its food, so famous for, you know, essentially being Saigon if Saigon was still standing today. And all of what I know about Little Saigon and all of what everybody's perception of it is, wouldn't be possible without the work of a journalist and without the work of a newsroom. It makes it so tangible to me.

Like a newsroom helped create this city, ethnic enclave, this neighborhood. And I just think that's so awesome. It's a testament to the power of local reporting and just community based reporting and especially like ethnic media and the willpower and determination especially of immigrant communities.

Tiên: Thank you so much for sharing this incredible piece of history. Could you leave us with any recommendations for an Asian American history book or film?

Katelyn: There’s a whole book about this story called Yen Do and the Story of Người Việt Daily News by Jeffrey Brody. I’d recommend a documentary called Saigon, U.S.A. This film really helped me understand why the Vietnamese community is the way it is. I’d also recommend Suburban Refugees: Class and Resistance in Little Saigon by Jennifer Huynh which I’m reading right now!

Thanks for reading! Do you have a story you’d like to share? Just reply to this email, I’d love to hear from you.