Background As highly productive as genomic information is, it is necessary to gauge or quantify the amount of information that reaches the lay public for the development of wider personalized medicine education.Newspapers can play crucial role in science/health communication and in framing public dialogue.However, investigation on the role of newspaper coverage of genome-related articles is not available in China.Methods We investigated the coverage of genomic medicine in eight major Chinese national newspapers using the China Core Newspapers Full-text Database (CCND) and articles in scientific journals in PubMed from 2000 to 2011.Results The number of genome-related articles in all eight newspapers temporarily increased in 2000, and began continuously decreasing thereafter from 2001 to 2009.Conversely, there was a continuously increasing trend in the number of genome-related articles in PubMed during this period.The numbers of genome-related articles among the eight major newspapers from 2000 to 2011 were significantly different (P=0.001).Commentary/mini review and articles about gene therapy of specific disease were most frequently published in 2006 and 2011, while the number of genome-related articles transiently increased across the eight newspapers.Conclusions This study highlights the significant gap between newspaper coverage and scientific articles in scientific journals on genomic medicine in China, highlighting the need to enhance collaboration between scientists, medical professionals and media sources as an important strategy in disseminating genomic medicine knowledge to a wider audience.