The Free Lance is independent reporter and news photographer JB Nicholas. Its my answer to the media elite’s refusal to provide a mainstream megaphone for a working-class voice that peals back the curtains of power and privilege in America. I’ve been officially credentialed as a journalist by the City of New York since 2007.

Before I started The Free Lance, my reporting was published by the Village Voice, the Daily Beast, the New York Post, the New York Daily News, Gothamist, WNYC and others. My radio report for WNYC covering the arrest of Hollywood heavyweight Harvey Weinstein for rape was rebroadcast by NPR nationally.

My news photography has been published by hundreds of print, online and broadcast publications around the world, including Paris Match, National Geographic, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, New York Times Magazine and many others. I’ve had scores of exclusives—including the only news photographs of the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School killings in Connecticut. My photograph of master swindler Bernard Madoff was one of the Guardian Weekend Magazine's "Ten Images of the Noughties."

Photo Credit: Michael Nagle.

As a reporter, I’ve solved a killing by prison guards; detailed how New York’s court system killed Benjamin van Zant, a mentally-ill juvenile offender; revealed that New York City was building a $1 billion jail on Rikers Island; exposed statutes of Confederates Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson inexplicably displayed in the Hall of Fame of Great Americans;  debunked a right-wing conspiracy that the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre never happened; documented the history of the Internet's first "viral video";  and found the devilish Boston fan who buried a Red Sox jersey in the new Yankee stadium, among many other things.

My reporting helped spur the enactment of new laws raising New York’s age of criminal responsibility to 18, new laws reforming the state’s parole system, new laws mandating the expansion of drug-treatment programs in jails and prisons, removal of statures of Confederate generals Lee and Jackson from the Hall of Fame of Great Americans and cancellation of a planned $1 billion Rikers Island jail.

Photo Credit: Mary Altaffer

As a journalist, I’ve successfully defended freedom of the press in court several times, defeating censorship by opponents as varied as the NYPD and Hollywood heavyweight Steven Spielberg. My federal civil rights lawsuit against the NYPD reformed the way New York City regulates official press credentials, mandating due process and other safeguards. The National Press Photographers Association awarded me a Special Citation in 2021, "for his dedication and perseverance in protecting the rights of journalists.”  

Photo Credit: Steve Hirsch via The New York Post

Famously, I beat Russell “Gladiator” Crowe in an spontaneous 7.7 mile bicycle race from Manhattan across the Manhattan Bridge over the East River to Brooklyn in 2012. I photographed Crowe along the way, then wrote a first-person account of it for the New York Daily News.

I’m also a licensed New York State outdoor guide, specializing in fly-fishing for trout and wilderness adventure/survival.