On Deadline was compiled and edited by Mark Mahoney, editorial page editor of The Post-Star in Glens Falls, N.Y. If you have an innovations or inspiration you'd like to share with American Editor readers, please e-mail it to Mark at mahoney@poststar.com.

Spring 2009 Moving on Lessons from across the pond Go jump in a lake Re-gifting Unflattering portrayal Freedom of speech debate Blame it on the kid Super Bummer Business model Aren’t we non-profit already? Sun still not shining Fewer statehouse reporters

THE CLASSIC JOB OF PAPERBOY is being mined by a best-selling author to convey the challenges faced by business managers throughout the world.

The 10th book by New York Times best-selling author Jeffrey J. Fox is called “Rain: What A Paperboy Learned About Business.”

The main character is a 13-year-old fictional paperboy named Rain, and the book is pitched as a business fable that uses the problems faced by the boy as metaphors for real-world business issues. In the novel, Rain faces mean dogs, bullies, customers that won't pay and the challenges of growing his paper-delivery business, then resolves the problems in “surprising and clever ways.”

Fox recognizes that many important people in business, entertainment and politics learned the basics of business, including self-discipline, by delivering their local newspaper. Some of those famous figures include billionaire investment whiz Warren Buffet, former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

As an appendix to the narrative, Fox includes an analytic, “The Rain Reader,” in which he helps interested readers and business students with the varying complexities of “Rain."*