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.
purported to profile an adolescent West African boy, Youssouf Malé, who had sold himself into slavery on a cocoa plantation in the Ivory Coast.
[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.
[7] A film adaptation was released in April 2015, starring Jonah Hill as Finkel and James Franco as Longo.