LETTER TO READERS: WELCOME TO TRULY INDEPENDENT, TOTALLY UNCENSORED JOURNALISM
Aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, Breezy Point, Queens, New York, 2012. Photo credit: JB Nicholas
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I fear nothing, no one, no group, no situation, nothing. I'm a truly independent journalist, here to report truth and share uncensored opinion. I'm original, kinetic and iconoclastic. I judge ideas, not people. I offer informed, pragmatic solutions to the pressing problems facing America today. I’m not here to score political points in any Kulture Kampf sideshow.
I'm not your average “scribbler,” as the New York Daily News’ legendary Kerry Burke, dean of street reporting in the City, calls reporters.
That's because, before becoming a full-time journalist in 2006, I spent almost 13 years in the prisons of the Empire State from 1990 until 2003. There I studied the law in prison law libraries, first worked as a reporter (for a prison newspaper), served my fellow prisoners as a jailhouse lawyer, sued for and won the right to organize the Nation's first prisoner-run, prisoners' rights organization (notwithstanding a Supreme Court decision banning prisoner “unions”), sued for and won greater fairness in New York's parole hearings and earned a college degree, summa cum laude.
Paroled in 2003, I moved to New York City, lived Downtown in the Village and earned a Bachelor's Degree with high honors from New York University. I worked as a paralegal for legendary liberal legal lion Ron Ruby before becoming a news photographer for the staunchly Republican, Rupert Murdoch-controlled New York Post in 2006. In addition to the Post, my news photography was published by hundreds of print, online and broadcast publications around the world, including Paris Match, National Geographic, Vanity Fair, Time magazine, New York Times, The London Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Bild, Daily Mail, Daily Beast, New York Daily News, Newsday, The Village Voice and Gothamist.com, among others.
I captured the only news photographs of the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School killings in Connecticut. One of my photographs of arch-criminal Bernard Madoff was one of the Guardian Weekend Magazine's "Ten Images of the Noughties."
I became an investigative reporter in 2015. My work helped spur enactment of new laws raising New York’s age of criminal responsibility to 18; led to the cancellation of a new $1 billion jail on Rikers Island; convinced the Governor of New York to order the removal of statues of Confederate traitors generals Robert E. Lee and "Stonewall" Jackson from the Hall of Fame of Great Americans in New York City; and helped expand drug treatment to prisoners by convincing legislatures to pass laws requiring it.
Along the way, I successfully defended freedom of the press in court, separately defeating censorship by both Hollywood heavyweight Steven Spielberg and the NYPD. My lawsuit against the NYPD led to the total reform of the way New York City officially credentials members of the media. The National Press Photographers Association awarded me a Special Citation for my "dedication and perseverance in protecting the rights of journalists” in 2021.
Finally, I was awarded the Kathy Acker Award for avant garde excellence as a journalist in 2022.
Notwithstanding my success, no news organization ever hired me as a full-time "staff" journalist. Legally speaking, I was never more than an independent contractor or "freelancer" in the mainstream, corporate media world. It didn't help that the news industry contracted significantly during my career. It also didn't help, I think, that my best years coincided with the Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements. The media powerbrokers didn't hire men, especially white ones, during that time. Even the Marshall Project, an organization allegedly devoted to criminal justice reform, passed me over because I didn't have the right "pedigree."
Finally I said "Fuck you. Fuck it" and left the City to go fly fishing for wild trout---for three fucking years.
I'm so good at fishing now I figured I'd become a wilderness fly fishing guide. But, so far, my 31 year-old felony conviction has thwarted me from obtaining the state-issued guide licenses required to operate a commercial guide service in the North Eastern states where I seek to work: New York, New Hampshire and Maine. It looks like it's going to take a lot of legal work to get the licenses I need. I’ll likely win, but it’ll take time.
Meanwhile, my criminal record is also blocking my search for temporary employment in my adopted upstate New York home.
That's why I’m turning to journalism to save my life again. I really didn't have a choice the first time, and I don’t this time too. Journalism is the only work I can do without a background check. I literally have to write to eat—and for everything else.
I hope to grow this modest effort into something bigger. ‘Til then, its just my lone voice, howling from the wilderness.
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The author at the exit of a stream-lined cave called “Dover Stone Church” in the foothills of the Berkshire mountains, Dover, New York, 2014.