The history of Nguoi Viet Tay Bac (Northwest Vietnamese News) is the story of a family, a community, and its newspaper growing together. When husband and wife Kim and Hang Pham first immigrated to the United States in 1979, the Vietnamese community in the Seattle-Tacoma area was 20,000 people. During the 1980s, the community grew, as did the need for a local Vietnamese-language press. In response, the couple established the first privately owned Vietnamese newspaper in the region, Nguoi Viet Tay Bac in 1986. It is an independent branch of the world’s largest overseas Vietnamese newspaper, Nguoi Viet Daily.
With Kim as the editorial soul and Hang Pham the marketing brain, and combined with the explosive growth of the Vietnamese community in the 1990s, the newspaper prospered. It became the voice of the Vietnamese population in the Northwest and the main media outlet through which they communicated. From 1995-2011, they also published a weekday edition.
Hoa Nguyen is the news editor and Dong Phuong Le is the assistant editor. Kim and Hang Pham’s three grown children, Julie, Andy, and Don help run the newspaper. In 2002, Nguoi Viet Tay Bac began covering local news for the small screen. It provides TV field reports of the Vietnamese community in Seattle to Saigon Broadcasting Television Network (SBTN).
The newspaper is a living example of how bridges are being built between two generations of Vietnamese in America. Today, the number of Vietnamese residing in Washington has climbed to approximately 80,000 people. Northwest Vietnamese News has been there to chronicle the community’s history.
