First things first, the Las Vegas Chinese Daily News is a misnomer.
"We come out three times a week," says publisher Helen Hsueh, coy smile crinkling the corners of her mouth.
Hsueh's office is in on the second floor of the Chinatown Plaza on Spring Mountain and Wynn roads. Go through the doors, past a small reception area with a computer, past a room the size of an oversized master bedroom closet—where three reporters are talking fast and typing faster—and you're there. It's the only part of the small operation that feels, well, unnewspapery—only a constantly ringing cell phone and a low-humming laptop pierce the silence.
Hsueh has the primped, Kodak look of a former beauty queen. And she smiles one of those whole-faced smiles—like her eyes and mouth are racing to see who can reach her nose first. From outside the office door, Huesh can drink in the local Chinese business diaspora. The Center at Spring Mountain, to the right, has extended Chinatown's borders east of Valley View—and into American commercialism (Quiznos and Starbucks franchises outfitted in Tong Dynasty architecture). To the west: Gold Coast signs in Chinese (the only English word, "comps"), new pan-Asian shopping centers and smiling billboard mugs of Asian real-estate agents. Back at Chinatown plaza, a throng of happy-faced tourists, part of a continual stream of daily visitors shuttled by Sino Coach and other charter bus lines, takes in this slice of the Pacific Rim in the land of neon.
In some ways, Chinatown's growth exemplifies Hsueh's own growth. She emigrated from Penghu, Taiwan (pop. 92,800, nicknamed "island of fishmen") to Las Vegas in 1974, landing a job dealing 21 at the California hotel-casino. Even though her husband (David) had a large family, she felt lonely. "I couldn't find a Chinese person," she says.
No such worries these days. As publisher of the Las Vegas Chinese Business Directory—whose 2005 edition runs 218 colorful pages on everything from architecture to remodeling, all in Chinese—as well as the Daily News, the Valley's only Asian newspaper, also in Chinese, Hsueh has become an ombudswoman of sorts for local Chinese culture. She's particularly proud of the Las Vegas Chinese Daily News. On stands Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, the newspaper is an amalgam of local and international news. It typically runs 24 pages, eight dedicated to local news (by seven staff writers; up from one in the beginning), eight to international affairs and eight to local real estate—"lots of Asians moving here, particularly near Chinatown because this place attracts Orientals. They feel warmth here."
As fate would have it, Hsueh credits her transformation from a casino employee to businesswoman—she ran a party-planning business (it failed), co-produced with the Chinese American Chamber of Commerce the first Chinese business directory (she bought control of it last year) and started the Daily News in 2003—to an accident that nearly killed her.
January 2003. Spring Mountain and Redwood. A drunk driver hits her head-on. She's hospitalized for four months. The man is doing an eight-year prison bid.
Her body is in shambles—broken bones, injured organs, three back operations. Has to regain motor functions, relearn how to walk. While recovering—she dieted on a pharmacy's worth of pain pills, got addicted, then quit cold turkey, vowing to let her body heal itself—she revisited the idea she had in 2000, of starting a Chinese newspaper. She didn't do it then because she was scared that it'd be too hard, that she'd fail. As the saying goes, no guts ...
"I didn't have the courage," Hsueh says. "But after the accident, I didn't have any more fear. I nearly died. I thought, 'You don't know when you're going to die, so I might as well go for it'."
Getting advertisers, she hoped, would be easy. She knew everyone, was practically a walking phone book.
"It was so hard," Hsueh says, with a sad, pained expression on her face.
Hard because Huesh was so driven. Two months after getting out of the hospital, the first issue of the Las Vegas Chinese Daily News hit newsstands, 16 pages of her heart and soul. Early on, it was just Hsueh, a cousin and a friend who'd come from Taiwan to care for her after the accident. (She never told her parents about the accident, fearing that both of them, in their mid-80s, would go into shock. The local Pzuchi Foundation sent two folks every day for three months to check on her.) As the advertisers came on board, she ramped up operations, even hiring a writer from the Taiwan Daily News.
Hsueh is ecstatic about the paper's maturation. The October 28 edition carried stories on the governor's race, mentioning "Dina Titus" and "Gibson" (for Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson) in the headline. Page five of the real-estate section has a photo of a dolphin kissing the stomach of a pregnant lady. On the front page of the October 31 issue is a picture of GOP brain Karl Rove and a story about the indictment of I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, right-hand man of Vice President Dick Cheney.
As with many local stories, most of the article on the governor's race was translated from the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Las Vegas Sun. "About 70 percent was translated and 30 percent was new interviews," says staff writer David Tzu, who interviewed gubernatorial hopeful, Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt for the article. Having a diverse range of news only adds heft, Tzu says; it frees up writers (who speak English and Chinese) to blanket the Chinese community.
"We cover every aspect of the Chinese community—festivals, activities," says Tzu, a general assignment reporter. There's scant coverage of sports or crime, unless the story is biggest enough to warrant it. "Every year, an official from Taiwan or China comes to town to handle passport applications because we don't have a local ambassador. We cover those visits. We're very busy. It's a lot of pressure."
Hsueh's biggest coup might have been landing Kent Wu, a 30-year Taiwan industry news veteran who seems too dapper to be a newsman—navy blue slacks and white-striped blue shirt, like he walked out of a Dockers ad.
On this afternoon, Wu is standing over the shoulder of a writer. He comments here and there, then walk-runs to the next room, where two writers strum computer keyboards, producing a symphony of ta-tap, ta-tap, ta-taps. The reporters look up, flash insta-smiles and return to typing. As if on cue, the phones ring and they begin talking in a rapid-fire staccato. Wu prods this Weekly reporter and Huesh to pose for a picture.
Ultimately, Hsueh wants the newspaper to truly reflect its name: daily news. To get there, she's branching out, looking for more advertisers. The October 28 issue has an ad from State Farm agent Guetty Kaula—GASP, on the front page!—looking to become a resource for other minorities and businesses seeking to tap into the lucrative Chinese market.
Hsueh sees the Las Vegas Chinese Daily News more as a paper of resource than a paper of record. So if it's hard-hitting investigative pieces, scandals, or fury-inciting editorials, you want, too bad: "We make our own news. We don't talk about politics or religions. We try to be fair. We don't attack people. We only put out good news."
Listening to Tzu, it's apparent that he might be that rarity among newsmen—a writer who admires his editor. He says Hsueh's drive and passion—more so than the publication schedules—are what differentiates the Las Vegas Chinese Daily News from the comp.
"Helen is a go-getter," he says. "She had a dream to publish a newspaper for a long time. It was hard to make the decision to do it because it costs a lot of energy and a lot of money to run a newspaper ... Suddenly after the car accident, she felt free to do it. She had no more fear."