Raymond C. Hoiles

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Raymond Cyrus Hoiles (November 24, 1878 – October 31, 1970) was an American newspaper publisher who built a small family press into a libertarian-leaning newspaper chain. He was born in Alliance, Ohio, to a farming family and started his career as a subscription solicitor for The Alliance Review, a paper edited by his older brother. While studying electrical engineering at Mt. Union College, he worked for The Alliance Review.

In 1919, after World War I, Hoiles and his brother expanded their media holdings by taking over the Lorain Times Herald and the Mansfield News, where he served as publisher. In 1935, at age 56, he and his brother bought the Santa Ana Register in California. He became president of Freedom Newspapers in 1950 and held that role until his death in 1970.

Hoiles believed newspapers should express strong moral principles and have the courage to stand by them. He argued against taxpayer-funded public schools and even supported abolishing them, and he favored the United States leaving the United Nations. He did not endorse any political candidates in his papers and opposed Eisenhower and Taft for not being libertarian enough. The Santa Ana Register was notable for opposing the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. In a 1964 interview, Hoiles described himself as a voluntaryist, saying government should protect individual rights rather than redistribute wealth or control the economy.