While one of the most significant workers compensation bills ever adopted anywhere in the United States advanced through Oklahoma's Legislature, the shallow depth of local news reports was stunning.

One reason, I suppose, is that there was greater interest outside of Oklahoma in the legislation signed into law last week than there was curiosity within the state.

Business interests and workers comp watchers across the country were eager to see if Oklahoma would allow employers to adopt an alternative to the state's traditional workers comp system.

But news organizations inside Oklahoma mostly provided the state's citizens with short information bits on a weighty, 208-page bill that created at least 169 new sections of law containing many far-reaching changes on how injured workers will be treated.

Those changes hold substantial public policy implications that deserved more illumination within Oklahoma than the mere rewriting of press releases by news organizations.

Just a few of the issues the new law addresses include how work-related disabilities will be evaluated; whether mental injuries will be compensated; and how cardiovascular, respiratory and pulmonary disease are to be treated.

There is language addressing the limiting of benefits for injured workers, benefit payments to foreign aliens, the limiting of state control over benefit plans, child support payments, who is responsible when an employer can't meet its obligations, injured claimants' ability to access courts, and on and on.

Yet the rewriting of superficial press releases passed for reporting on the topic.

I noticed most of those press releases from supporting businesses and politicians played up the law's replacement of the judicial system with an administrative system for adjudicating claims. They talked about corralling runaway costs but provided little detail on how system changes are expected to work.

Most news reports mirrored those statements without offering much more. There was little or no analysis and not much discussion on what one side or the other will lose or gain.

I don't blame employers for wanting a chance to improve matters in Oklahoma or for implementing a system that may work to their advantage, especially employers who have experienced positive results from their ability to opt out of the work comp system in neighboring Texas.

But with so much at stake for Oklahoma, I blame the state's lackluster media for failing to provide insightful reports that might have generated public discourse on some important points.

Then again, in a world increasingly satisfied with short, punchy news reports, a dense, 208-page bill on an arcane topic is hard to adequately explain.