O.C. Vietnamese Magazine Seeks Global Audience

The short history of Vietnamese-language publishing in this country has been controversial and violent.

During the 1980s, three journalists--among them a Garden Grove publisher and a San Francisco youth group leader--were killed and a number of others injured or threatened for advocating normalization with Hanoi or publishing what was construed as pro-Communist viewpoints.

Today, 19 years after the war that forced the exodus of 1.5 million Vietnamese from their homeland, the winds of change are being felt and, in some circles, resignedly accepted. Violence against moderate or liberal Vietnamese expatriates is rare.

This optimism, coupled with President Clinton’s decision last month to end the trade embargo with Communist Vietnam, has led a group of entrepreneurs to publish the first international Vietnamese-language magazine. They hope it will finally help heal and unite their fractured, exiled worldwide communities.

Called Nguoi Viet The Gioi, or Viet & World, the magazine will attempt to unite Vietnamese communities by informing expatriates of international news, features and personalities as they relate to their culture, heritage and homeland.

The magazine’s creators say they hope that Viet & World will eventually become the Newsweek or Time magazine for Vietnamese readers who live abroad.

“That is our plan for this magazine, which will introduce our people to each other and remind us to never forget our roots,” says editor-in-chief Viet Khanh Nguyen, whose pen name, Son Dien, is well-recognized by Vietnamese readers. “And we want as many people as possible to have access to this publication.”

Twenty-thousand copies of the premier issue are scheduled to hit the stands in Little Saigon on Saturday, and 10,000 in Germany the following week. Thereafter, more will be printed for other Vietnamese communities in California, other states and Europe.

Here in Orange County, the largest Vietnamese enclave outside of Southeast Asia, and elsewhere in the country, dozens of large and small Vietnamese publications come and go. But Nguyen and his partners are optimistic that Viet & World will not only thrive in this cutthroat business, but become the educational and entertainment magazine that Vietnamese outside their native country, or Nguoi Viet Hai Ngoai, would turn to.

“There are many Vietnamese newspapers in the different communities but there is not one magazine that serves as a voice” for all expatriates, says Ngoan Le, board director of UniMedia Corp., which publishes the magazine. “We want to become that voice.”

A lofty goal but not impossible given the reputation and experiences of the men and women who have come together to create the colorful, glossy magazine. The seven-member board of directors of UniMedia comprises Vietnam’s premier actress, Kieu Chinh, and a cadre of well-known Vietnamese literati.

One is the 72-year-old Nguyen, also editor-in-chief of Westminster’s Vietnam Economic News and formerly the managing editor of the Vietnam Press News Agency of the Republic of Vietnam before the country fell to Communists in 1975. Another is Yen Do, editor of Nguoi Viet Daily, the largest Vietnamese-language daily in the United States.

Given Nguyen’s and Do’s admitted partiality to hard news with an economic slant, board members and staff writers Nha Ca, a novelist, and her husband, poet Tu Tran, will lend their literary touch to the magazine.

Always cognizant of the political atmosphere in the Vietnamese community, Viet & World will intentionally remain “neutral” on the most important, debated and divisive issue of the collective Vietnamese community--whether the U.S. should normalize relationships with the Vietnam government, the next logical step on the heel of resumption of commercial trade between the two former enemies.

Viet & World’s neutrality will separate it from most other Vietnamese publications. Although the magazine’s directors realize that moderate voices in the past have been met with violence and demonstrations, they say they will not be deterred in their mission to be objective.

“Inside those of us who have had personal experiences with the Communists, there will always be a want for revenge,” said Nha Ca, who, along with her husband, languished in the Vietnam government re-education camp for 12 years because of their literary connection during the previous regime. “But we cannot deed our bitterness and hatred onto the younger and new generations. It is too heavy a burden for them.”

Vietnamese publishing in the United States had its genesis with what has become the country’s largest daily newspaper of its kind, the Nguoi Viet Daily. The 12,000-circulation newspaper began in 1978 in editor Yen Do’s Santa Ana tract home.

Just a few miles away, Viet & World’s launch is similarly unassuming.

Its newsroom--if it could even be called that--is modest and sparse. Just three cubbyholes for writers and two austere offices, one with a portable desk, the other with three all-important Macintosh computers. There is no copier--the solo fax machine does double duty. In all, there are only five on staff, and that includes editor-in-chief Nguyen, who works 12-hour shifts seven days a week.

It is from this humble, obscure setting in the heart of Orange County’s Little Saigon that a new phase has evolved within the Vietnamese publication milieu.

The magazine’s immediate goal is to get Vietnamese communities to prepare for unprecedented celebrations to greet an upcoming historical epoch--April 30, 1995, the 20th anniversary of the day their country fell and the day many fled Vietnam to rebuild their lives in a new world.

The first issue is dedicated to this painful, historic commemoration, with articles whose underlining theme is that it’s time Vietnamese leave the past behind.

Viet & World’s long-term aim is to encourage the young Vietnamese to learn about or continue to preserve their Asian traditions and culture, a heritage which many in the older generation lament their children and grandchildren have lost in their quest for assimilation. For the younger generation, each issue will have articles on Vietnamese traditions and historic events as well as profiles on Vietnamese youths who are contributing to their community.

For other readers, Viet & World--which also has a smaller English-language section--will have news, business stories and features from the various Vietnamese enclaves. “We want to make sure every issue of the Vietnamese community is discussed, whether in English or in Vietnamese,” said Michael Nally, editor of the English section.

Most of the articles in the English version target the younger generation--youths who are not proficient in Vietnamese. Among features in the first issue is Nally’s question-and-answer with a Garden Grove honor student who writes for the student newspaper. Another story is a profile of a Vietnamese boat refugee who is now a youth pastor in Canada.

The premier issue, and those following it, will feature stories that run the gamut from news on the economy and state of technology to profiles on the lifestyles of the not-always-so-rich-and-famous fellow Vietnamese expatriates. For example, one article in the first issue discusses the need for a Vietnamese Memorial--akin to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington--in Vietnam to recognize the men and women who died fighting for their country.

“Millions of Vietnamese men, women and children died fighting in my homeland,” said actress Kieu Chinh, who is also a member of the group that wants to establish the memorial. “We want to express our gratitude and love to those who have died for a noble cause.”

How is it that the seven board members of UniMedia think they can launch an international magazine with a paltry $50,000? By pooling their resources, seeking contributions of other Vietnamese business leaders and not getting paid initially, they confidently reply. Also, many major French and American companies, such as Martell liquor and MCI Communications Corp., have already committed advertising revenue to the magazine.

“I know $50,000 seems like a small sum for this kind of venture,” said board President Kieu Chinh, who recently starred in the movie adaptation of Amy Tan’s “The Joy Luck Club.” “But we don’t have to worry about the biggest expense, which is printing and which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

That is because board director Le is president of Orange-based Annam Printing Inc., and has donated his press. Le persuaded the owner of a Vietnamese printing company in Bonn, Germany, to publish the magazine in Europe. A similar agreement is in the works with a printing company in Australia.

In marketing the magazine to Vietnamese communities, UniMedia has begun with advertising in a handful of Vietnamese-language newspapers. But because of the lack of capital, most of the marketing initially is being done in a very old-fashioned Vietnamese way: word-of-mouth.

The marketing plan is unconventional, Kieu Chinh admits, but already, business people in Vietnamese districts in San Jose, San Francisco, Houston and Dallas, Texas, Washington, France and Germany are aware that Viet & World will hit their newsstands as early as the end of this month.

“It may sound different, funny, even impossible, but that’s how things traditionally work with our people,” says Kieu Chinh, who’s also in charge of public relations. “In our case, each of our board members knows people who know other Vietnamese in different communities around the world, and all indications show that Viet & World will be well-received.”

Some experts in the magazine industry, however, are not so sanguine.

Clay Felker, a longtime magazine editor and educator, criticizes as impractical the very reasons Viet & World’s creators cite in explaining the need for an international magazine. Felker, who launched the now-defunct New West magazine in 1976 after successfully founding New York magazine, believes the worldwide Vietnamese communities are geographically too distanced to give a magazine like Viet & World the circulation it needs to survive.

Furthermore, he says, younger generations, once assimilated to their new culture, tend not to be interested in magazines published in their native language. Viet & World has “a perfectly laudable objective, and publications aim toward a specific community do help to identify common bonds,” he says. “But traditionally, those publications have not been successful beyond their immediate community.”

Nguyen and his partners acknowledge they have a long road ahead of them before Viet & World could ever become entrenched in the collective Vietnamese community.

“We’re not saying this will immediately become the Vietnamese Time or Newsweek,” the editor said late one evening after everyone had gone for the day. “Those companies have money and a foundation of a well-known reputation already under them. We are a smaller and poorer group and so we have to start much more slowly.”

But what he and his lifelong friends and colleagues do have are dreams and writers, a couple of computers, an expensive printing press and people who are willing to give their time and efforts to began a magazine for the Vietnamese. Those things and the fact that “no one has tried this before,” he says, “makes this a pretty good start.”