LIV Turns 12: The Decision to Reinvent Itself

In the twelve years since Legal Initiatives for Vietnam (LIV) was launched on November 5, 2014, a remarkably short span of time, the world has changed beyond recognition. Those who founded LIV – Trịnh Hữu Long, Phạm Đoan Trang, Trần Quỳnh Vi and Trương Tự Minh – in 2014 could not have imagined it in their wildest dreams.

At that time, we pursued a magazine model, named it Luật Khoa tạp chí, built around in-depth analysis, documentation, and commentary on politics and law. Publication was selective but the output was quality. The reasoning then was fairly simple: news was already in abundance, both in the press and on social media; what was lacking was the knowledge needed to understand that news, in other words, explanatory journalism. In that era, the state press was far more critical, independent media was far greater in number, and social media had not yet been flooded with fake news, disinformation and misinformation, as we see it today.

Today, everything is entirely different. The state press has passed its golden era; after several rounds of restructuring and streamlining, it has shrunk in size and collapsed in authority,  and now obediently serves as nothing more than a government mouthpiece. Independent media is on death’s door. As for social media, there is little need to elaborate. With artificial intelligence (A.I.), the production of fake news is now not only faster but also far more convincing.

The result is that the public still has information in abundance, yet no longer knows whom to trust.

In this new turn of the era, we made one of the boldest decisions in our independent journalism history: pivoting toward original daily news reporting, a return to the most elemental form of journalism.

In November 2025, we gathered our small team of reporters and began experimenting with news writing internally. An internal pilot website was set up, and our magazine reporters—more familiar with writing analytical pieces running thousands of words—for the first time in their journalistic working life, practiced writing 300-word news reports with a single target: the truth.

In December, we officially launched our News section. We worked while anxiously awaiting the readers’ response. And the results exceeded all expectations: readership on the website tripled, while a fifteenfold increase on social media. In that very first month, we uncovered and reported intensively on a serious legislative issue: the draft resolution on digital citizen scoring. The issue spread widely and instantaneously, and in the end the government was compelled to remove the scoring provisions from the resolution.

Also in that first month, as LIV gained widespread reach, the authorities moved quickly to block the website luatkhoa.com in Việt Nam. It was hardly a pleasant development, but it further strengthened our conviction that we were heading in the right direction.

In the blink of an eye, nearly a year has passed since we launched our daily news coverage. LIV’s news is now available not only on the Luật Khoa website and social media, but also on YouTube and in our English-language publication, The Vietnamese Magazine.

We have not abandoned our traditional magazine content, but news has now become the center of the organization and the headwaters of our flow of information. From news, we produce in-depth analytical and commentary articles and videos. News has become the most fundamental and important raw material from which our other journalistic products are made. On many issues, we have found that LIV is either the first or the only outlet to report, and on many others, one of the outlets following most closely. Together with other independent publications, we are helping to chronicle this era and what we believe matters. Those news reports of a few hundred words sometimes become the only, or the most reliable, documentary record of a given event.

Those news reports, those in-depth analyses, and those vivid videos carry our hope for the future, even as the present remains deeply bleak. We hope for a civic life that is more vibrant, more open, and more resolute—one in which independent journalism will become more sophisticated, of higher quality, and more widely recognized. Democratization begins with liberalization, and liberalization begins with the actions of each and every one of us as citizens. That freedom is something we must win and safeguard ourselves. The road may be short or it may be long, either way, it begins with the first tentative steps.

LIV has taken those first tentative steps. Would you like to come and walk alongside us? If the answer is yes, we are hiring for a great many positions. Apply today!

We look forward to having you with us.

Trịnh Hữu Long
Executive Director

Legal Initiatives for Vietnam (LIV)

info@liv.ngo
4th Floor, RIIC Building, National Chengchi University
No. 64, Sec. 2, Zhinan Rd., Wenshan Dist.
Taipei City, Taiwan (ROC) 116
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