Yen Ngoc Do

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Yen Ngoc Do

Yen Ngoc Do (born 1941 — died August 17, 2006) was a Vietnamese American newspaper publisher. He was born in South Vietnam.

[edit] Biography

Yen Ngoc Do was born in Saigon. His father was a tailor who supported the Viet Minh in its war for independence against France. His mother was a devout Roman Catholic.

Do placed 20th out of 3,000 applicants in an examination to enter Saigon's most prestigious high school. He served as editor of the school newspaper and also printed and distributed clandestine leaflets that supported the independence movement.

As a teenager, he led protests for more student scholarships and upgraded classrooms from the South Vietnamese government. Those protests, coupled with the leaflets, resulted in his arrest and suspension from school. He later obtained a diploma at the age of 22 after a program of self-study.

Do worked as a reporter and editor for several newspapers in South Vietnam and later served as an interpreter for American and French journalists.

Do and his wife, Loan, were married in Saigon in 1963.

Do was forced to leave his country when the communist North Vietnamese Army defeated the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), during the Fall of Saigon.

His family was among the first immigrants from Vietnam to arrive at Camp Pendleton in 1975. At Camp Pendleton he began a library for the Vietnamese immigrants and solicited books from U.S. Marines on the base.

In December 1978, he and a few friends started Nguoi Viet Daily News in Orange County, California, inking all the accent marks by hand because American typewriters did not offer Vietnamese fonts.

The newspaper started out small in his garage, which was the newspaper’s first office. It was a four-page weekly. Do was its editor, publisher, circulation manager and page designer. He delivered copies of his newspaper door-to-door.

Under his leadership, Nguoi Viet became the largest Vietnamese publication in the United States, and now has a daily circulation of more than 16,000 and more than 50 employees. Its stories about Vietnam provided immigrants with accurate, timely and in-depth news about their homeland under the oppression of the communist government. These stories are more often informative than those found in the mainstream American press.

Nguoi Viet, which means "Vietnamese people," recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. The anniversary coincided with the launch of Nguoi Viet 2, a weekly English-language section for children of immigrants who speak English, but still want news about their community and culture.

In 2003, Do received the Asian American Journalists Association's Lifetime Achievement Award.

Do died at Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center in Fountain Valley, California of complications from diabetes and kidney disease.