Media love a good scandal, as long as it's not in their own backyard

It may be called Southern Weekly and be published in southern Guangzhou, but in mainland media circles the newspaper has earned the nickname Northern Weekly.

One of the most outspoken newspapers on the mainland, it is respected for being bold enough to expose sensitive issues such as land disputes and corruption.

But the issues it uncovers are usually far from home; the newspaper steers clear of touchy topics on its home turf. Southern Weekly isn't the only mainland newspaper adhering to this cross-border strategy to avoid angering local officials - who own and control the provincial publications - and to help the editors keep their jobs.

The upshot is that local media, which should know the ground best and have the deepest resources, sideline themselves in favour of competitors from elsewhere. The revelation of melamine-tainted milk powder in northern Hebei province in 2008, for instance, first appeared in a Shanghai newspaper; in Shanxi province this past March the vaccine that killed at least four children and left many more disabled wouldn't have been publicised if a Beijing-based newspaper hadn't written about it. That followed another incident in the province in 2007 where hundreds of enslaved workers in brick factories were rescued after television journalists from neighbouring Henan province aired the story.

'It's hard to put a specific time frame on' this phenomenon known as yidi jiandu or cross-regional reporting, 'but it started at least as early as the mid-90s,' said David Bandurski, a researcher at the University of Hong Kong's journalism school.

The groundwork was laid in 1987 when Zhao Ziyang, then the top Communist Party official, mentioned in a report to the party's congress a practice called yulun jiandu, which means empowering the media to monitor society. Previously, the media's role on the mainland was mostly to espouse party propaganda.