The Mercury News reports today that three Vietnamese-language newspapers and a news web site have jumped into the void created when the Merc pulled the plug on its weekly Viet Mercury publication. Merc writer K. Oanh Ha says that the situation underscores “the vibrancy of ethnic media even as mainstream newspapers face uncertain futures.” Ha’s story points out that the Bay Area has about a dozen Vietnamese publications, six Chinese dailies are available locally, and Indian-Americans can choose from at least six monthly and weekly publications. “If all the mainstream media went on strike, I wouldn’t miss a beat,” said Ling-chi Wang, a prolific reader of Chinese publications who heads Asian-American studies at the University of California-Berkeley. “What I read in Chinese papers is so much richer than mainstream content … There’s many more pages of news about Asia.”