Over his San Juan newsstand in Texas' lower Rio Grande Valley, Quentin Newcombe tacked a sign: "The Valley Evening Monitor, the Valley Morning Star and the Brownsville Herald are . . . against our American public-school system. Buy other newspapers and help drive these objectionable carpetbaggers from our valley." The "carpetbagger" Newcombe meant is 73-year-old Raymond Cyrus Hoiles, a pinch-faced Californian who looks and acts as if he had just bitten into an unripe persimmon.
Until three months ago, few valley Texans had ever heard of Hoiles. Then, for $2,000,000, his Freedom Newspapers...