NSC Grad Returns to Cover Pulse Tragedy
Story by Nicholson News
Associated Press video journalist Josh Replogle works the scene near a mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub Tuesday, June 14, 2016, in Orlando, Fla. Replogle helped put himself through college by working at the Pulse dance club for two years. He returned to cover the mass shooting at the club. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
Associated Press reporter and video journalist Josh Replogle, ’09, has great memories of the University of Central Florida and the Nicholson School of Communication in particular. Why wouldn’t he? He arrived on campus thanks to a Bright Futures scholarship in 2005. Having only lived in Florida a short time before graduating from high school, the former North Carolina resident had barely heard of the school. He’d never even taken a campus tour.
Scholarship in hand, Replogle quickly immersed himself in campus life. He served as Knightro for some time and as a part of NSC Knightly News. While not busy with schoolwork, Replogle was working at Pulse, the popular gay club in Orlando that has become known around the world as the location of America’s deadliest mass shooting. The June 12 shooting left 50 dead including the shooter and more than 50 others injured. It was with a heavy heart that Replogle returned to the city as a reporter, whose up close and personal experiences as a college student gave him the skills to tell a tragic story.
“It feels surreal to now be a member of the news media covering the massacre at Pulse,” he wrote in a piece for the Associated Press. “I’ve focused my camera on countless murder scenes and tragic stories, and I rarely get emotional. I use my lens to distance me and keep work separate from real life. But Pulse was a big part of my personal life, and it remains a big part of me eight years later. It shaped me. It made me a better person because it dissolved my ignorance of a community fighting for its rights. It showed me that community was full of people with big hearts who took care of each other and protected each other, too often when their own families had rejected them.”
Replogle was a straight man working in a gay bar, a community of people who he says “virtually adopted” him and helped to ease his college expenses.
Read the entire article about Replogle’s experience here.
Replogle, who graduated from the UCF College of Sciences with a degree in broadcast journalism in 2009, appreciates the opportunity to tell stories that matter and connect with people emotionally. Although the Pulse story has been particularly difficult for him to tell, Replogle says his training in the UCF Nicholson School of Communication prepared him. Since graduation in 2009, Replogle has traveled the world, reporting about everything from the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) controversy to the death of Muhammad Ali.
None of that would have been possible, he said, without his scholarship, no-nonsense UCF professors and the several internships they pushed him to take.
George Bagley, Replogle said, had excellent insight and very strict video expectations. Former NSC instructor Kris O’Donnell set high standards with Nicholson’s Knightly News, but it was perhaps Tim Brown, Ph.D., who was Replogle’s biggest challenge.
“He was my first boss in a sense,” said Replogle. “He’s NOT your friend. He is the point person who breaks you into the field of real work. I thank him for being such a hard ass. You can quote me on that,” Replogle said with a laugh.
“But if they weren’t so tough I wouldn’t be where I am. My success is because of the dedication of my professors and telling me how the real world is. That’s what I needed. I wasn’t allowed do take any short cuts and it paid off.”
View original story here.