Vientiane Mai

Vientiane Mai (ວຽງຈັນໃໝ່, “New Vientiane”) is a Lao-language state newspaper based in the capital. In 2015 the Lao News Agency described it as the largest local-language newspaper and reported that it was accommodated in the offices of the Vientiane Capital Information, Culture and Tourism Department, alongside the capital’s radio and television service. That department-level relationship is the clearest documented account of the paper’s institutional position.

Media assets

Publishing: Vientiane Mai

Ownership and governance

Vientiane Mai is a state publication. No evidence was identified that it has been incorporated as a company or established as a statutory body, and no ownership register entry, founding decree or governance charter is publicly available.

The wider governance context changed substantially in 2025. On 16 June the Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism announced the transfer of press management functions for five entities: the Press Department, the Lao News Agency, Lao National Television, Lao National Radio and the Lao Press in Foreign Languages. A handover ceremony followed on 23 June, and on 8 July a memorandum formalised the move together with personnel, budgets and assets. The receiving body was the Commission for Information and Education of the Party Central Committee, headed by Khamphan Pheuyavong. The same restructuring reduced the number of ministries from 17 to 13 and renamed the supervising ministry the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, removing media from its portfolio.

Vientiane Mai is not named in any of those transfer documents. All five transferred bodies are central institutions; Vientiane Mai is a capital-level title. State Media Monitor identified no publicly available document specifying which body now exercises supervision over it, whether the capital’s culture and tourism department retained it, whether it passed to the Vientiane Capital Party Committee’s information and education structure, or whether it was folded into the central arrangement. What is established is that the ministry standing above its historic parent department no longer holds a media mandate, and that RSF places the paper within the group of titles carrying the line set by the Party’s information organ.

Senior appointments are not publicly disclosed. Neither of the paper’s websites publishes a masthead, editorial board or ownership statement, and no editor-in-chief was named in official reporting during the review period. Articles carry individual bylines only.

The Party leadership above this structure was renewed during the review period. The 12th National Congress of the LPRP met in Vientiane in January 2026 and re-elected Thongloun Sisoulith as General Secretary for the 2026–2030 term.

Source of funding and budget

Vientiane Mai publishes no financial statements, no annual report and no breakdown of its operating budget. Nothing has been disclosed since the last review.

The paper does sell advertising directly. It maintains a dedicated advertising contact with a separate telephone line and email address for commercial enquiries, and its site carried display banners for international consumer brands through mid-2026. It also runs reciprocal promotional links to Vietnamese municipal titles, Hanoi Moi and Kinh te Do thi, consistent with sister-city media cooperation rather than commercial placement.

Assessments obtained for State Media Monitor from local media observers continue to describe the paper as reliant on public allocation, historically from the Vientiane municipal budget, with advertising supplementing rather than replacing that support. No evidence was identified that commercial income had reached a level capable of sustaining the title independently. At the June 2025 transfer ceremony, Deputy Prime Minister Kikeo Khaykhamphithoune called on state media organisations to develop additional revenue streams and reduce their burden on the state budget; that instruction was directed at the five transferred central bodies, and State Media Monitor found no equivalent public directive addressed to capital-level titles.

Editorial independence

Vientiane Mai’s own reporting documents the framework it operates within. On 13 July 2026 the paper covered the preparatory seminar for Laos’s first National Media Conference, held at the National Convention Hall and chaired by Khamphan Pheuyavong, with the policy document presented by Politburo member Kikeo Khaykhamphithoune. The document defines media work as a strategic Party task, sets out the objective of raising the Party’s leading role over the media, and states that media must function as a sharp political and ideological instrument and as the mouthpiece of the Party, the state and society, defending the Party’s political line and the state’s laws. It also lists six binding ethical principles for Lao journalists, among them protecting state secrets and information affecting national security. The conference itself concluded on 15 July 2026 with a roadmap intended to extend that model through 2030.

Interviews with Lao media professionals conducted for State Media Monitor in late 2023 describe editorial output across the sector as subject to direct or indirect censorship, with attempts to publish without prior approval curtailed. Nothing identified in 2025 or 2026 suggests a loosening; the July 2026 policy document points the other way.

The statutory framework remains the revised Media Law No. 01/NA of 4 November 2016. The Constitution guarantees freedom of expression while prohibiting media from harming national interests and traditional culture, and a broadly worded penal-code provision permits the imprisonment of journalists who criticise the government, extended in 2014 to internet users.

State Media Monitor identified no Vientiane Mai-specific statutory safeguard, enforceable editorial charter, ombudsman, audience council or independent oversight mechanism insulating the paper’s editorial decisions from Party or state direction.

AI and digital policy

Artificial intelligence became an explicit element of Lao media policy during 2026. The July 2026 policy document reported by Vientiane Mai itself calls for the adoption of modern technology, artificial intelligence and cloud storage in news management, production and distribution, framed as a means of increasing speed and reach rather than as a question requiring editorial safeguards.

State Media Monitor identified no publicly accessible Vientiane Mai policy governing generative artificial intelligence, synthetic media, automated production, human verification or disclosure of AI-generated content to readers, and no binding national framework establishing such standards for state media.

Classification rationale

Vientiane Mai remains classified State-Controlled (SC), meeting all three conditions of the State Media Matrix.

It is predominantly state-funded. The paper publishes no accounts, but observer assessments describe it as dependent on public allocation, and no evidence was identified of a non-state revenue base large enough to challenge that finding. Advertising is sold and visibly carried, but at a scale consistent with supplementary income.

It is state-owned and state-governed. Vientiane Mai is a state publication with no corporate or statutory form, historically administered through the capital’s information, culture and tourism department. Its supervisory line was not clarified publicly following the 2025 restructuring, which is itself a governance finding: the paper’s institutional position is determined administratively and disclosed to no one outside it.

Its editorial agenda is subject to state control. RSF identifies it as one of the titles through which the Party’s line is disseminated, and the paper’s own coverage of the July 2026 policy document sets out the terms in which its function is defined, as the mouthpiece of the Party, the state and society. No structural safeguard insulating editorial decisions from that direction was identified.

August 2026