The Vietnam Reporting Project

Investigating Agent Orange’s Toxic Legacy in Vietnam

About The Vietnam Reporting Project

The Vietnam Reporting Project is a journalism fellowship program created by the Renaissance Journalism Center that produced award-winning multimedia news coverage on the enduring environmental and health consequences of Agent Orange contamination in Vietnam, a long-forgotten and poorly reported issue. Through the dissemination of quality, in-depth journalism content across multiple media platforms, and by leveraging the mainstream, ethnic, and social media, the project sought to raise public awareness, spark national conversation, and stimulate problem solving on this lasting legacy of the Vietnam War.

In 2010-2011, the fellowship provided training, support and travel stipends to 13 journalists from the mainstream and Vietnamese American media to conduct field reporting in Vietnam. Working independently or collaboratively in small production teams, the journalists—print, radio and television reporters, photographers, multimedia producers—generated original news and feature coverage in a variety of formats, including television, radio, multimedia, video and blogs. Depending on the news outlet, the fellows’ work was in English and/or Vietnamese.

To ensure that the content reached the widest audience possible, especially key target audiences such as the Vietnamese communities and policy decision-makers,  the fellows’ work was distributed through outlets in both the mainstream, independent and Vietnamese American media, as well as through nonprofit organizations and a robust social media and community engagement effort.

The Renaissance Journalism Center also created a website to showcase the fellows' work, as well as a DVD that is distributed nationally and in Vietnam.

Through powerful stories and images, as well as through personal blog entries in English and Vietnamese, the fellows shed light on the very human impact of Agent Orange, both in Vietnam and the United States, and deepened our understanding of this complex issue.

The Vietnam Reporting Project, a collaboration with Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP), was funded by the Ford Foundation.