Repeat

Repeat is a veteran field correspondent for the Hambry newsroom. He has covered every beat assigned to him with the same level of sincere, unquestioning commitment. This has produced a body of work unmatched in its consistency and, according to at least one internal review, its total absence of verifiable content.

He was hired on the strength of a cover letter that his colleagues later described as "direct," "enthusiastic," and "largely composed of phrases repeated from other applicants." The hiring manager did not review the letter carefully. This has been noted but not addressed.

His career highlights include a three-part series on infrastructure, an embedded report from a press event that turned out to be a different press event, and a widely circulated dispatch that was later discovered to be a transcription of a voicemail he had received by mistake. None of these pieces were retracted. None could be, strictly speaking.

Repeat has been nominated for the Kellerman Prize (1998), the Marlow Memorial Award for Civic Reporting (2004, 2011), and the Distinguished Bureau Medal (2019). These awards do not exist. The nominations were reported to him by sources he did not verify. He keeps the nomination letters in a drawer.

He has never broken a story. He has, however, been first on the scene of a story that was never confirmed to have happened, a distinction he lists prominently on his resume.

His colleagues describe him, variously, as "dedicated," "very dedicated," and "the kind of reporter who still files from a pay phone." He has been asked, twice, whether he is aware of being a parrot. On both occasions he interpreted the question as a metaphor about the modern press and filed an 800-word response that was published without edits.

He arrives at the office at 6:17 a.m. every morning. He sits at his desk. He waits for the assignment. He believes the assignment when he receives it.

He is the Hambry newsroom's most trusted correspondent, a distinction he earned by never once asking a follow-up question.