Asked what could be done to help, the requests became eerily familiar: journalists need training in their craft, various people told us, but more than anything they need training in how to protect themselves.
(The menu of policy options is, by now, familiar; we need to start making hard choices).
Familiar stories need to stand out even more, whether it's a serious topic or, very broadly speaking, human interest.
Some of his material is too familiar to need recycling, as in Michael Brown's post-Hurricane Katrina bungling.
And although "nature" is not always as benign or indeed as natural as it is cracked up to be, people are entitled to ask, when a new technology comes along, why nature's familiar patterns need to be disrupted.
Certain things are beyond the ability of democracies to control; if a country runs a trade deficit, and thus has to borrow from abroad, it cannot control, in the long run, the rate it will pay on that debt.The perils of extreme nationalism are too familiar to need repeating here.
"I'm wondering if the Spice Girls are too familiar to need this treatment," he told the BBC News website.
The biblical argument for our existence is, I trust, too familiar to need repetition here.
