The Shanghai Journal blog has an interview (proxy link) with Peter Hessler, author of River Town and Oracle Bones and China journalist at large. If you like Hessler's writing, it's worth a read. Among other things, Hessler shares some interesting opinions about China reporting and the differences between newspaper and magazine journalism and books:

[I think] there is a tendency to politicize everything that is happening in China.  Analysts like to blame the Communist Party for everything, when often there are deeper cultural and social reasons for the way people act. Also, I think that the American press generally portrays China as a darker place than it really is. There are complicated reasons for this; it’s not a matter of prejudice or propaganda, but rather a tradition of journalism.  A good journalist is supposed to expose injustice.  But this approach can be a problem for a foreigner working in China, because the American readers don’t have enough context to put the injustice in perspective. They need to get a better sense of what daily life is like. 

***

Books give a writer much more freedom [than newspaper or magazine reporting].  It’s quite telling that in the past ten years we’ve seen a real change in the type of China books that are coming out, many of them by journalists, whereas most news coverage seems to be stuck in the same ruts.  The narrow structures of traditional journalism have not been flexible enough to cope with what’s happening in China.  But the books have more freedom and they’ve done a better job of reflecting this country.

 

The whole thing is worth a read.