Have you ever been injured at work? I have and the process of getting diagnosis and treatment was undermined by a nightmare adjudication: Workers' Compensation System. I went to hearing after hearing at which (over & over) my employer's insurer didn't show up, lost time from work and eventually lost interest and gave up. But I never thought of writing about the nightmare -- which I guess underscores a difference between great reporters and me.

Steve Greenhouse, labor reporter for the New York Times and recently the author of "The Big Squeeze" an excellent book about the methods employers and banks have extracted money from the rest of us, looked at the chaos called Workers' Compensation (you call this a "system?"). He and N. R. Kleinfeld (who has reported dozens of ground-breaking stories) have told about it in a series of, for me, stirring articles which have been appearing for the last few days in the New York Times.

A World of Hurt: Meatball Justice which appeared Monday told my story and those of many I know who have tried to file compensation cases. In World of Hurt: That's The Game, Baby which appeared Tuesday, Kleinfeld alone took a look at adversarial medicine at its worst, where diagnosis & treatment are secondary to scoring points. This certainly recalled my time in such compensation mills. Wednesday, Greenhouse reported on the battles betweeen workers and bosses on the safety front in A World of Hurt: Safety Bucks which describes how employers discourage compensation claims.

All this is done with all the resources which, when it wants to, the Times can muster: video, multi-media presentations, resource links, collections of past articles.

So, congratulations to Greenhouse and Kleinfeld for this work and to the Times for devoting their efforts and resources.

Will this wonderfully researched and written series die the death of inattention? I am sad to say, that so far as I can tell, this is not the talk of the town. What is the matter with us? Is it not snarky enough? Not about unemployed bankers? Not "political" in the narrowest sense?