Its reports avoided taking sides on contentious issues, in contrast to the community-owned papers, which often engaged in advocacy journalism.

[5] The greater San Francisco Bay Area was even more Vietnamese speakers, one of the largest concentrations in the United States.

A two-year-long market study sponsored by Knight Ridder found that 58% of Vietnamese-American newspaper readers preferred to read stories in Vietnamese instead of English.

[12] Mercury News articles on Vietnamese American topics were regularly translated and republished in Vietnamese-language newspapers nationwide.

[2] The Vietnamese-language weekly magazine Thị Trường Tự Do (Free Market) had planned to expand into a broadsheet as a joint venture with the Mercury News.

However, Thị Trường Tự Do and Mercury News publisher Jay T. Harris disagreed over who would own a controlling interest in the paper, and the deal fell through.

Owners of existing dailies and weeklies complained of unfair competition for advertisers[5] and accused Mercury News publisher Knight Ridder of attempting to kill the independent ethnic press.

[18][1] The paper published its final issue on November 11, 2005,[7] and it was expected that the investors would begin publication of a successor, VietUSA News, on December 2.

[21] Viet Mercury was distributed free of charge on Fridays at 500 locations, including restaurants, medical offices, and newsracks.

[2] In its final year of publication, Viet Mercury had a weekly circulation of 35,000, ranking first among nine Vietnamese-language newspapers in the San Jose market.