Publisher Of First, Biggest Vietnamese Paper In U.S. Dead At 65

By: E&P Staff Yen Do -- who founded the Nguoi Viet as a four-page weekly in his Garden Grove, Calif. garage in 1978 and grew it into the largest Vietnamese-language daily in the U.S. -- died Thursday at the age of 65.

Do died of complications of diabetes and kidney disease at a Southern California hospital, the Los Angeles Times reported in an obituary written by Mai Tran and Stuart Silverstein.

Do's paper, the Nguoi Viet Daily News, was the first to serve the Vietnamese community in the U.S., now has a circulation of about 18,000. It includes an English-language section, and publishes a Vietnamese Yellow Pages. The name means "Vietnamese People."

The paper was vastly influential in the bustling Orange County area known as Little Saigon that grew with an influx of refugees at the end of the Vietnam War.

Do began his career in journalism career at the age of 12, working for an underground high school newspaper in Saigon. He was arrested and suspended from high school for leading student protests against the South Vietnamese government.

The Times said he worked as a reporter and editor for several publications in Vietnam. He became an interpreter for American and French journalists during the war.

Do, his wife, Loan, and family arrived in the United States in the first wave of Vietnamese refugees after the fall of Saigon in 1975. He became a dishwasher in a fast-food restaurant, and used his savings of about $4,000 to print the first 2,000 copies of Nguoi Viet on Dec. 6, 1978.

Do's paper was sometimes criticized by the strongly anti-Communist residents in the Vietnamese community, which believed his aim of objective journalism led it to be soft on Vietnam's Communist regime.

In 1989, the Times reported, some 150 people protested outside the newspaper's office because it published pictures of the tomb of Vietnam's Communist patriarch, Ho Chi Minh.

Do resigned as editor In 1994 when some community members threatened a boycott of the paper to protest its support for a trip to Vietnam by the president of the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce.

In addition to his wife, Loan, he is survived by four children: Anh, Lin, Dao, and Tung.