Your correspondent has been slacking for the last few weeks. A big reason is that recent news about media in China has been either brutal or dull.

The biggest events of the last two months, blogged to death but almost completely ignored by mainstream news sources, have been the nasty happenings at Taishi village. The one newspaper that has been devoting coverage to the village is The Guardian, who sent a reporter with an over-active imagination to observe the miserable events that have unfolded there. The reporter has since been sent to therapy. Simon World has a roundup of all relevant links to the Taishi story.

Aside from that, it's all Super Girls, bad journalism, second-rate versions of foreign magazines, lousy films, boring TV programs, new and unwelcome regulations, and the Nanny messing about with the Internet. Skinhua or Sinhua has of course been diligent with its output of girlie pics, as you can see from their Photo Gallery page, from which the most noteworthy album is Stars pose naked against breast cancer, which was also published on the People's Daily website.

Let's hope the media heats up as the temperature drops in Beijing.