Big Press Boom Centers on Ethnic Readership

Reporters sit at a conference table choked with papers and books and write their stories out in longhand in the Westminster warehouse that serves as a newsroom for Nguoi Viet, Orange County’s largest Vietnamese-language newspaper and its only Vietnamese daily.

Until 1986, the complex web of accent marks that stretches over nearly every Vietnamese word had to be drawn by hand on the pages before the newspaper went to press.

Technology has come slowly to Nguoi Viet, or “Vietnamese People,” which was founded in a Westminster garage in 1978 by Do Ngoc Yen, a refugee journalist from Saigon. But growth is no stranger to the paper, which is part of an extraordinary boom in Orange County’s foreign-language publishing industry.

In the last nine years, the paper has soared from four pages to 20, from two staff members to 30, from losing money to bringing in an estimated $1 million in annual ad revenues and built a solid circulation of 12,000. Since 1984, its operations have expanded to include three weekly newspapers--one each in Orange County, Seattle and San Diego--a publishing house that has printed 20 Vietnamese-language books and a weekly TV news program broadcast Saturday mornings on Channel 18.

Although Nguoi Viet could be considered a local media dynasty, it does not monopolize Orange County’s foreign-language press.

Nearly 40 are printed in Vietnamese, Spanish and Korean in the county today, up from an estimated 25 in 1986. The publications range in size from just eight pages to more than 30 and have a combined estimated circulation of more than 100,000.

“This (growth) shows that the mainstream media is overlooking a sizeable audience segment,” said Felix Gutierrez, a professor of journalism at USC and an expert on Latino media. “Someone else is filling that gap, reaching those readers and those advertisers.”

The presence of such a large foreign-language press also shows that “there’s enough of a business interest in reaching those people, enough of a financial base there to reach them,” Gutierrez said.

Experts attribute the growth in Orange County’s ethnic press in part to the ease with which a newspaper can be started. “You need a Macintosh (computer) and some software and then you go to Kinko’s and print it out,” said Edgar P. Trotter, chairman of the Department of Communications at Cal State Fullerton. “I could go into the newspaper business on one month’s salary and something to eat.”

But perhaps more importantly, the burgeoning of such an alternative press can be attributed to the corresponding growth in the county’s ethnic population and minority business community. From 1977 to 1982, the census bureau estimated that the number of minority-owned businesses in Orange County rose from about 5,700 to more than 14,300.

And in 1980-85, Asians and Pacific Islanders increased from 4.5% of the population to 6.9%, from 86,893 Orange County residents to 145,632, according to census figures and a 1985 study by the Orange County Forecast and Analysis Center. In addition, the Latino population grew from 14.8% to 15.6% of the county population, from 286,339 residents to 329,355.

By contrast, the black community here is shrinking. In 1980, blacks comprised 1.3% of the county population, or 25,287 residents. A 1985 study estimated that the percentage dropped to 1.1%, or 23,217 residents. There are no Orange County newspapers catering specifically to the black community.

Experts contend that the foreign-language press is a link between immigrants and their “mother countries.” An estimated 60% of the news stories in most of the serious foreign-language newspapers here are devoted to coverage of “home,” be it Mexico, Vietnam or Korea.

The ethnic press is also credited with strengthening the internal life of Orange County’s ethnic communities and with explaining the complex U.S. legal system and society to newcomers and the disenfranchised.

For many editors and reporters who work for such papers, that mission is serious business.

“My intent is to teach the community, be a vehicle to express feeling, promote our leaders, our students,” said Fernando Velo, editor and publisher of the Santa Ana-based Azteca News.

“That’s our best intent. . . . We are trying to educate that we are one race, Hispanics, and we have to know better about our history, our geography. . . . We also cover taxes, housing, immigration, everything.”

The nine Spanish-language, four Korean-language and 25 Vietnamese-language newspapers and magazines that operate in Orange County also offer a service to their advertisers that cannot be found in the mainstream press.

“The highly segmented publications like this go straight to the heart of a community,” said Doug Alligood, vice president for special markets at the New York-based ad agency BBDO, whose major accounts include Pillsbury Co., PepsiCo and Lorillard, Inc. Kent Cigarettes.

Despite such efficient targeting, however, Alligood said that “segmentation is only going to go so far. You get to the point of diminishing returns, especially if you’re targeting a segment of 20,000 people in a market of 2 million.”

That is one reason why most ads in foreign-language newspapers are placed by local merchants rather than national advertisers. Another is that most foreign-language newspapers are small weeklies, whose circulation is unaudited, ad sales unstudied and success at reaching a market difficult to prove.

A report by Hispanic Business magazine--one of the few studies of advertising dollars spent in any ethnic market--estimated that advertisers spent $33.2 million nationwide in 1986 in advertising aimed at Latinos in Spanish- and English-language publications. About $7.5 million of that was spent in the Los Angeles media market, which includes Orange County.

“I would say that 95% to 98% is (spent on) a small handful of large papers like La Opinion (in Los Angeles),” said Stephen Beale, senior editor at Hispanic Business. “I suspect we’re not really counting the weeklies.”

Still, most of Orange County’s ethnic newspapers are circulated for free, which means that the papers are surviving on ad revenues alone. Many--like the Azteca News--are managing to break even, and some--like Nguoi Viet--are even making a profit.

After all, Gutierrez said, advertisers “can’t reach them (foreign-language readers) through the mainstream press.”

Like many of its Spanish-language competitors, the Azteca News had jusy one national advertisement in a recent edition: a large display ad for beer. The rest of the advertising consisted largely of ads for physicians, immigration attorneys, car repair businesses and employment.

But while Azteca’s advertising may be provincial, its editorial content is not. The paper comes out weekly on Wednesdays, and the front page of its June 24 edition had stories about the increase in acquired immune deficiency syndrome among Latinos, the recent Southern California visit of Argentine President Raul Alfonsin, the inauguration of Orange County’s new Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and the perceived readiness among growers to violate the recently enacted Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

It has a stable of columnists from an array of Latin American countries and tries to reach an audience ranging from “rich people from South America coming into Orange County and poor people coming from Central America,” Velo said. The paper’s circulation is an estimated 30,000, he said.

Velo is a photographer and college professor from Chile, who fled that country’s political oppression in 1973, ended up in Southern California in 1976 and started Azteca in 1980. After five years of red ink, Azteca finally began breaking even two years ago.

“One week you lose $50, the next you make $80,” Velo said. “This paper is not for profit.”

Azteca’s stiffest competition comes from Miniondas, a Santa Ana-based paper that comes out twice a week and sells for a quarter. The front page of Miniondas’ June 30 edition sported headlines declaiming, “Mexico; Corruption and Assassinated Journalists,” “Fascism, the Biggest Danger that has Existed for Civilization and Culture” and “Sex Change Recognized as Legal in Spain.”

Tucked on an inside page of the paper was one installment of a series about “True Crimes and Mysteries,” which chronicled the 1941 murder of a Lebanon, Ky., woman and showed the eight bullets that doctors had dug out of her body.

Miniondas editor and publisher Sergio Velasquez says Azteca News is “interesting” but his paper has different readers and a different mission.

“We go political, but only local (politics),” Velasquez said. “We know that most of the people from Mexico from this area are from Michoacan. So we have a lot of news from Michoacan and more pictures, more news, more social (news), more amateur sports.”

Miniondas has a circulation of 26,000. Velasquez refuses to discuss its sales and revenues, but adds that “I can tell you it’s only two newspapers in Spanish in black numbers: La Opinion and Miniondas.”

In August, Miniondas will be published three times a week, will add an English-language section and will drop its X-rated movie ads, Velasquez said, all changes that he contended will strengthen his 12-year-old paper.

Unlike most of its Spanish- and Vietnamese-language counterparts, the three Korean papers that circulate in Orange County are based in Los Angeles and have bureaus in Garden Grove, which has perhaps the most concentrated Korean business population in the county.

The Korea Times is the largest of the Korean-language papers operating in Garden Grove. It comes out six days a week and has a special Orange County edition on Fridays, with about four pages of editorial content and eight pages of ads.

“The reason why the Korea Times is here is we are collecting the information, reporting about those people who live in this area,” said Suk-Jong Kim, a Korea Times reporter and Orange County bureau chief. “And we can get good advertising here.”

The Korea Times has a circulation of 12,000 in Orange County, which Kim expects to rise with the recent inauguration of a daily edition inauguration. Kim attributes the burgeoning Orange County edition to the local increase in Korean businesses, which number about 400.

“There is a lot of Korean advertising,” he said. “One thing especially to be recognized is that many foreign and American businesses put an ad in our paper, . . . classified ads looking for engineers, homes for sale.”

Unlike many of its counterparts, Nguoi Viet not only reaches inward to Orange County’s Vietnamese community, but it also reaches outward to the U.S. community here, with a weekly English-language section nestled in its regular Sunday edition.

The section includes poetry and local, national and international news focusing on Vietnam and its people. It is an effort “to open the door to the American people (so they can) look into our community, and to help our young people who do not read Vietnamese,” Executive Editor Dieu Le said.

Le estimates the paper’s daily circulation at 10,000 to 12,000. It is available in dispensers throughout Orange County and is mailed to 15 states and several foreign countries. Until this year, when similar papers began publishing in San Jose and Australia, Nguoi Viet was the only Vietnamese daily outside of Vietnam, Le said.

Like most of its counterparts, Nguoi Viet reports about Vietnam and has a decidedly political flavor. “All of them (the Vietnamese papers) in Orange County are anti-Communist,” said Le.

But beyond its politics, Nguoi Viet “is a company,” and as such focuses on growth and expansion in addition to ideology and community service.

“We are now five days a week and hope to go to seven, we are now 20 pages a day and plan to increase to 30 or more next year,” Le said. Computerization of the paper is in the planning stages.

“And we want to improve our English edition so we can have a better connection with Americans and other ethnic groups,” he said.