Michael Finkel

Michael Finkel (born 1969) is a journalist and memoirist, who has written the books True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa (2005), The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit (2017), and The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession (2023).

Finkel was a writer for The New York Times until 2002, when he was discovered to have created a composite protagonist for a story on the Arab slave trade within Africa.^[1] The story published in 2001, titled "Is Youssouf Malé A Slave?" purported to profile an adolescent West African boy, Youssouf Malé, who had sold himself into slavery on a cocoa plantation in the Ivory Coast. The story as published included photographs, including one described as being that of Malé. However, after publication, an official from Save the Children contacted Finkel to say that the boy pictured was not Malé. Upon questioning by his editors, Finkel admitted that the boy profiled in the article was a composite of several boys he had interviewed, including one named Youssouf Malé.^[2] Finkel was subsequently fired.^[3]

Initially, Finkel had pitched a story about child slavery The New York Times, but his reporting did not uncover proof of enslavement. Instead, he encountered teenagers working for meager wages in difficult conditions,^[4] leading him to create the composite character to fit the narrative he had proposed.

After his dismissal from The New York Times, Finkel learned that Christian Longo, an Oregon man who had murdered his wife and three children in December 2001, had used "Michael Finkel" as an alias during his several weeks as a fugitive. After Longo's capture the next month, Finkel communicated with him. Finkel says that, before the trial, Longo had hoped the journalist would bring out "the real story" to help him win acquittal; after his conviction, Longo gave Finkel interviews admitting his guilt. Finkel wrote a memoir about their relationship, True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa (2005).^[5]

Finkel is also the author of The Stranger in the Woods which tells the story of Christopher Thomas Knight, a hermit who lived alone in woods in the North Pond area of Maine for 27 years.^[6]

True Story was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime (2006).^[7] A film adaptation was released in April 2015, starring Jonah Hill as Finkel and James Franco as Longo.

In 2008, Finkel and photographer John Stanmeyer won the National Magazine Award for photojournalism^[8] for "Bedlam in the Blood: Malaria",^[9] published in National Geographic (July 2007).^[10]