About Bao Lam Dong

Bao Lam Dong

Overview

Bao Lam Dong is the provincial newspaper of Lam Dong, the vast province of Vietnam's Central Highlands and south-central coast whose capital is Da Lat, the hill city famous for its cool climate, flowers and pine forests. Published from Da Lat, it is the official voice of the Lam Dong Provincial Party Committee, and its website is baolamdong.vn, with an English-language edition at en.baolamdong.vn. It serves a province that, since 1 July 2025, is the largest in Vietnam by area, after the merger of the old Lam Dong, Binh Thuan and Dak Nong provinces into a single province stretching from the highland forests to the sea.

That merger makes Bao Lam Dong an unusual provincial paper. Most Vietnamese provincial newspapers serve a single, long-settled province; Bao Lam Dong now serves three former provinces at once, with three distinct economies and cultures. Its readers include the flower and vegetable growers of the Da Lat plateau, the coffee and rubber farmers of the western highlands, the fishermen and resort operators of the Phan Thiet and Mui Ne coast, and the bauxite miners and aluminium workers of the Dak Nong industrial zone. The paper's job is to speak to all of them, and to report the work of a provincial government that is itself new, formed from the merger of three administrations.

The paper is a Vietnamese-language newspaper, published in print and online, and its English edition carries a selection of its reporting for foreign readers, including the province's investors and tourists. Its coverage follows the province's development priorities: high-tech agriculture, tourism, forestry, mining and processing, and the infrastructure, including expressways and the Phan Thiet airport, that is meant to bind the new province together.

History

Bao Lam Dong's present form dates from the provincial merger of 2025, but its roots lie in the provincial press of the old Lam Dong province, centred on Da Lat. The paper itself does not publish a founding date in its English-accessible material, and this profile does not invent one. What can be said with confidence is that the paper, in its current form, is the newspaper of the enlarged Lam Dong province created on 1 July 2025, when Lam Dong, Binh Thuan and Dak Nong were merged by a resolution of the central government, presented at a ceremony attended by the Party's General Secretary and central leaders.

The merger was one of the largest administrative changes in Vietnam's recent history. The new province covers 24,233 square kilometres, making it the largest in the country, with 124 communes and wards plus the Phu Quy Special Zone, and a population the paper itself puts at nearly 3.87 million. It combines the Central Highlands forests of Dak Nong, the flower-filled plateau of Da Lat, and the coastline of Phan Thiet and Mui Ne into a single province, and it is governed from Da Lat by a new Provincial Party Committee, whose secretary after the merger was Y Thanh Ha Nie Kdam, a member of the Party Central Committee.

For the paper, the merger meant a new audience and a new brief. Where it once reported a highland province of flowers, vegetables and tourism, it now also reports a coastline of resorts and fishing ports, and a western highland of bauxite mines, aluminium plants and forest reserves. Its English edition's year-end review of 2025 described the year as a foundation year for the province, a year of bold decisions and unprecedented change, and it listed the merger itself as the year's most impactful event. The paper's own reporting has followed that line, presenting the merger as the opening of a new era of development for the province.

The paper's recent output shows a newsroom reporting a province in rapid transition. Its 2026 articles have covered the province's export and tourism performance, the start of operations at the Dak Nong aluminium electrolysis plant at Nhan Co Industrial Park in late July 2026, which produced Vietnam's first aluminium ingots, and the province's investment promotion, including the licensing of 59 new projects worth more than 167 trillion dong in the first eight months of 2026. These are the stories of a province trying to turn its new scale into economic weight.

Programming and Content

Bao Lam Dong's content is organised around the new province's three worlds. From the Da Lat plateau it reports high-tech agriculture, flowers, vegetables and coffee, and the tourism that has made Da Lat one of Vietnam's most popular domestic destinations. From the western highlands it reports forestry, bauxite mining and aluminium processing, and the eco-tourism of the Dak Nong UNESCO Global Geopark, Dray Sap Waterfall and Ta Dung National Park. From the coast it reports fishing, resorts, the Phan Thiet airport project, and the industrial development of the south-eastern districts.

Provincial politics is the paper's core. It reports the resolutions of the new Provincial Party Committee, the sessions of the People's Council, the decisions of the People's Committee, and the province's implementation of the 2026-2030 socio-economic development plan, which sets ambitious targets including 10 per cent GRDP growth, more than 134 trillion dong of total social investment, and full disbursement of public investment capital. Its reporting on that plan is detailed and regular, tracking disbursement, site clearance, revenue collection and business support commune by commune, and in July 2026 it reported on a province-wide emulation campaign, "180 Days and Nights of Determination to Successfully Achieve Double-Digit GRDP Growth", involving all 124 communes, wards and special zones.

The paper also carries the social and cultural coverage of a provincial daily: education, health, transport, urban development, and the cultural life of a province that includes Kinh, Cham, K'Ho, M'Nong and many other communities. Its English edition translates a selection of this material, including its year-end reviews and its reporting on investment and tourism, for readers outside Vietnam.

Audience and Reach

Bao Lam Dong's audience is the population of the enlarged province: the farmers and flower growers of Da Lat, the coffee and rubber growers of the western highlands, the fishermen and resort workers of the coast, the miners and factory workers of the industrial zones, and the officials and civil servants of the new provincial administration. Its print edition circulates within the province, and its website extends its reach to Lam Dong natives living elsewhere in Vietnam and abroad, and to foreign readers through its English edition.

No audited circulation figure for the paper is published, and this profile does not invent one. Its reach can be judged by its role: as the Party committee's newspaper, it is the paper the province's leadership reads and cites, and its stories are the province's official account of itself. Its English edition's articles were being crawled by search engines within the hour during 2026, a sign of a site that is actively updated and indexed, and its reporting on the province's investment projects is quoted by business outlets following the new province's development.

The paper's audience also includes investors. The enlarged Lam Dong is actively courting investment, and the paper reports investment promotion conferences, the awarding of investment certificates, and the progress of major projects, from the Dan Kia-Suoi Vang tourism area near Da Lat to the bauxite and alumina complexes of the west. For an investor following the province, Bao Lam Dong is a source of record on what the provincial authorities are planning and doing.

Digital Presence

Bao Lam Dong's digital home is baolamdong.vn in Vietnamese, with its English edition at en.baolamdong.vn. The Vietnamese site carries the paper's daily news, updated through the day, with sections for politics, economics, society, culture, sport and the localities of the new province. The English site carries a selection of stories, including the province's year-end reviews, its investment reporting, and its coverage of the merger's aftermath, translated for foreign readers.

The paper's digital output in 2026 has been active and current. Its English edition carried detailed reporting on the province's investment flows, including the start of operations at the Dak Nong aluminium plant and the province's quarterly revenue targets, and its year-end review of 2025 was published in English as a full account of the merger year. The site is updated frequently, and its articles are indexed quickly, which suggests a newsroom that treats the website as its main channel rather than an afterthought to print.

The paper is also present on social media, where its stories circulate among Lam Dong readers at home and abroad. Its website remains its main channel, however, and it is the address other media cite when they quote the paper. For readers outside Vietnam, the English edition is the most accessible route into the province's news, and it is notably fuller than the English offerings of many Vietnamese provincial papers.

Ownership and Organisation

Bao Lam Dong is the newspaper of the Lam Dong Provincial Party Committee, and it operates as a state press organ in the Vietnamese system, in which every newspaper is attached to a Party body, a government ministry or a mass organisation. Its editorial line follows the Party committee's direction, and its leadership is appointed through the provincial Party organisation. Since the 2025 merger, it serves the enlarged province's Party committee, which was inaugurated at the merger ceremony with Y Thanh Ha Nie Kdam as secretary.

The paper's newsroom is based in Da Lat, the provincial capital, and its reporters cover the province's 124 communes and wards, from the highland districts to the coastal wards of Phan Thiet and Mui Ne and the island special zone of Phu Quy. The scale of that brief is new: before the merger, the paper's reporters covered a highland province; now they cover a province that stretches from the Central Highlands to the South China Sea, and the paper's content reflects that wider geography.

The paper does not publish the name of its current editor-in-chief in its English-accessible material, and this profile does not assert one. What is clear is that it operates as the province's official newspaper, and that its role has grown with the province itself, as the enlarged Lam Dong seeks to present itself as a new growth pole for the Central Highlands and the south-central coast.

Contact and Availability

Bao Lam Dong is available in print within Lam Dong province and online at baolamdong.vn in Vietnamese and en.baolamdong.vn in English. Its news is free to read on both sites, and its print edition remains the record of the province's official news.

For a reader who wants to follow the new Lam Dong, the paper is the natural starting point: it is the province's own newspaper, reporting the merger and its aftermath from the inside, and it is the fullest English-language source on the province's development. Its coverage is official in character, and readers looking for independent or critical reporting on the province will need to look elsewhere, but as a daily account of life on the Da Lat plateau, in the western highlands and on the Phan Thiet coast, and as the voice of the province's authorities, it has no substitute.